September 26, 2024 10:00 AM – Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary

During the Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary meeting held on September 26, 2024, at 10 AM, several important topics were discussed:

Key Topics

1. Judicial Need and Caseloads:
   Jeff Weiss explained the weighted caseload system, which calculates the judicial need based on court filings and time required for different case types. The utilization formula (need divided by have) determines how over- or under-utilized judges are.
   • Discussion on Utilization Rates: A utilization rate of 1 is ideal, meaning the court has the exact amount of judicial resources required. Higher numbers indicate over-utilization (e.g., 1.34 means 34% more cases than capacity).
   • Senior Judge Days: Judges can take up to 10 senior judge days, but it’s often difficult to find senior judges to cover in certain counties, especially in more rural areas.
   • Geographical Disparities: Some counties (like Elkhart and Hamilton) have high judicial need due to population growth and increasing case filings, while other counties are underutilized.
2. Request for New Courts and Magistrates:
   Elkhart County requested additional judicial resources due to ongoing courthouse consolidation and increasing casework. Hamilton County also highlighted significant growth, projecting the need for 4 more judicial officers.
   • Discussion on Referees vs. Magistrates: Several counties, including Lawrence and Spencer, argued for converting referee positions to magistrate positions for efficiency and better handling of judicial workloads. Magistrates have more independence than referees, who require all decisions to be reviewed by a supervising judge.
3. Substance Use and Criminal Caseloads:
   Several counties, particularly Hamilton, noted increases in criminal cases related to drugs, including fentanyl and marijuana possession. A broader public policy discussion was initiated on whether some criminal charges should result in civil penalties instead of criminal cases to reduce court burdens.

Committee Actions and Votes

• No Formal Votes Were Taken. It was clearly stated at the beginning of the meeting that no action would be taken during this session. The meeting was for reviewing the requests, with votes to follow at a later meeting in October 3rd.

Additional Notes

• Caseload Disparities: The committee discussed disparities between counties with high judicial need and those with excess capacity. Some members raised the possibility of redistributing resources by reducing judicial officers in underutilized counties.
• Technological Improvements: The ability to conduct virtual hearings and manage cases remotely was noted as a significant change, allowing judges to work while traveling or on vacation, but also leading to longer working hours for some judges.
• Rapid Growth in Hamilton County: The population growth projections for Hamilton County (from 370,000 to 550,000 within 20 years) and the staggering increase in case filings (from 20,000 in 2020 to a projected 31,000 by 2026) were eye-opening.
• Elkhart County’s Courthouse Project: The presentation on Elkhart County’s $100+ million trauma-informed courthouse project showcased significant investment in court infrastructure, aiming to create a more supportive environment for those going through legal challenges.
• Lawrence County’s Dire Financial Straits: The note that Lawrence County had already cut critical staff, including a deputy prosecutor, highlighted the financial pressures facing smaller counties, adding weight to their request for more judicial resources.

I want to thank everybody for coming to the interim study committee on courts in the judiciary. First meeting here. I want to, just before we get started, I want to first just acknowledge Senator Brown, my vice chair has been a huge help here. And I also want to acknowledge the chief justice of Indiana, Loretta Rush, who’s here. Thank you for coming. Her engagement in the court related issues. So we have a pretty full agenda. So we’re going to be kind of tight on our rules today. So we’re going to handle two of our topics today, and the goal is just to meet twice. I want to give everybody a heads up. We will note be taking any action today. We’re going to hear from the requesters. Their written submissions have been provided to all the committee members. Want to give the committee members time to ask questions, get answers, take notes, consider, and we will take up the requests for action at our October 3 meeting, which should be our last meeting. I think we can get everything in on two meetings, but as a result of that, I’m going to ask all the presenters, all the presenters today on all topics to stay to five minutes or less. I want you to expect, and I of the committee, I expect that they will have read the written materials ahead of time. So if you can just hit the highlights, the things you really want to focus on, obviously, your time is not including questions and answers. If you say something that sparks the committee’s interest, then we’ll let them explore it. But just want to try to stay on task. You don’t need to rehash your presentations. They’ve been submitted, confident the committee will read them. So with that, we’re going to start off. We’re going to first pick up the issue about courts, requests for new courts, and then we will deal with some homeowners association issues that we were asked to take up seconds. And we’re going to start off with Jeff Weiss from the office of Court Services, who’s going to come up and explain sort of the playing field that we operate on when we consider new courts, which is the weighted caseload measurement system. He’s going to give us an intro to that and tell you how to read it. Sir, thank you for being here. Am I on now? Okay, well, thank you so much to the committee for inviting me to come and explain the weighted caseload report. This is a report that we do every year. It’s based on the previous year’s filings and I. Our calculations of judicial need and judicial have. This past February, we did a new time study to update all the weighted caseload minutes for each of our, I think it’s 49 now case types. We reviewed the amount of time that a judge has to spend on cases and how much time the judge has to spend on non case related events. The report is here. It includes several different charts. The severity of need chart which lists all of the counties ranked by their utility utilization, which is the ratio between the need and the have. So the courts that have the most need, according to this particular report, are listed at the top. The ones with the least are available at the bottom. We’ve also included a historical need chart which shows each county and how many times since 2015 that it’s have has exceeded its need. So it’s had possibly excess or extrajudicial resources that it could use for something else. It lists the years and the number of times. I love the caseload study and I could talk about it for a long time, but I know I only have five minutes so I don’t know how much detail you want, so I’m ready for questions. Can you let me guide you just a little bit because you and I chatted and what I found helpful is can you just explain because I think when you first look at the chart, right, you see the need to have an utilization and your mind wants to just like do the math. But that’s not exactly how you come up with the utilization. Can you just explain how to read that far right column? Sure. It might be if everybody wants, if they have the report, if they want to look at the severity of need chart which shows the first column is need, the second is have and then it’s utilization. The formula is just need divided by halve is utilization. And if you look at it, it looks like if a county has. Let me get to the right chart here. If we talk about the first one on the list, it looks like you could just subtract the need and the have and that’s how many judges you need or how many judges you possibly have excess and you could. Do it that way. But I think the utilization is the more important number to focus on because it tells you a utilization of one is perfect. Everything’s balanced. A judge or a court or a district that has a utilization of one, they have the exact number of judicial minutes needed to handle the new cases that came into the court. So it’s, if you think about it, if you have a utilization of 1.34 or 3.5, that means that judge is working harder than they should. According to our measures, they’re working about a third of a judge, harder than we want a judge to be. More cases, not 34%. Right. So 34% more cases, more casework needed than you are expected for a full time judge. So does that help? Yeah, I think that’s extremely helpful, yeah. Question, Senator Brown, thank you very much. I’ve had some conversations too about how this report is compiled. So maybe just for those who are not as familiar with the system, this is based on a caseload number of days in addition to the minutes that each case is assigned to, correct? That’s right. So currently, across the state circuit superior courts, a judge is. A judge’s caseload is based on 213 working days, is that correct? That is right. And so that seems like. And in that, in each of those 213 working days, my understanding, it’s an eight hour day. Right. And within each eight hour day, there is a 90 minutes administration slash travel time. Correct. So six and a half hours. Right. Okay. And then in addition to that, within the 213 is calculated the use. Because you have 213, because you are calculating the use of senior judge days. Well, we are not including the senior judge days in this report. No, I understand that. I had a question about that use, but I don’t have that information yet. What I’m trying to get at is the 213 days assume that ten of the, if they are not working 223, let me put it that way, because they can take ten senior judge days, so to speak, so they only work 213 days, is that correct? Well, as I said, we don’t include senior judge days. Those are available. If a judge needs to be away from the bench, they’re definitely available. But that has not been included in the 213 day calculation. Okay. Okay. I think we’re on the same page. Just saying it differently. So what I’m trying to understand though, is each judge, my understanding is superior court circuit court across the state of Indiana has the ability to use ten senior judge days. Yes. To fill their bench when they’re not available. Absolutely. And I believe I read in the most recent information that there are about 100 senior judges available. I don’t have that number off the top of my head, but that’s probably right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So my question is, where did we come up with the 213 days to begin with? Do you know that? I do know that. We start with, of course, the full year, 365 days. Then we deduct weekends. We deduct paid state holidays, their paid vacation and sick days, and annual judicial education requirements. And that’s how we come up with 213 days for the year. Okay. Well, when you put in, like, federal holidays, state holidays, which are pretty much the same, and you distribute 213 days and a five day workweek, it comes to about a 40 week workweek, right? Yes, 42. So that’s ten weeks off. If I could explain. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Like 90 minutes to, you might have a TPR case that takes three days. You might settle, the parents come in and it’s one. So you factor in, you maybe think criminal jury trial, a normal. Can you turn on your microphone? Sorry. Just so that they can hear us when the stream. And. Sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead, ma’am. You may have a criminal jury trial that takes three weeks, or you may. Somebody comes in and does a plea. So there’s extra days that are expanded on that. These are just overall averages on that. I understand that. And the admin time is just. The admin time is for sometimes preparing, reading the documents and helping prepare for. You may have a stack of documents or expert reports or you may not. But we’re just trying to get where the average. No, I appreciate that. And obviously, you could have a week long criminal trial, or it could be settled, no plea, and you’re averaging that out across the system to say, what’s the weighted caseload? But at the end of the day, we’re looking at the need for courts based on a 213 day workweek. That’s right. That’s the number of days that they are available to work in court. 213 days per year. 213 days times six and a half hours a day. They’re actually in court. I just want to make sure that’s clear, because that 90 minutes is not just admin time, at least the way it’s described in your documents. It’s not just admin time to review documents. It’s also time for travel, things like that. Right. That would be the non case related time. That 90 minutes of time, managing your staff, that is, you know, hiring and firing performance reviews. That is, you may have to. Well, you’re managing your probation staff too. Those report to the judge. You may have a judicial or a juvenile detention facility you’re in charge of. You have to do your budget. You have to manage your budget and present it. There are meetings at the county that you have to go to. So there is quite a lot of time. A judge is not available on their bench every day to do work. The average is 213 days a year, and that is what’s available. Does that help? No, it helps a lot, and I understand that. I guess my concern is when I initially did some other calculations, for example, and getting back to the ten senior judge days that are purportedly available to each judge, if you actually added ten days to a judge’s workload, to 223, and you divide it out, the severity goes down to almost zero across the state in terms of need. Okay, I have not done that calculation. I have no reason to doubt your math. But I do need to point out that although we make senior judge days available, and we’re very liberal with that, there’s not always a senior judge available in a particular area, and we can’t require a senior judge to answer the call if there’s a need. Right, no, I get that, but I just sort of plugged that number in, and it’s still pretty generous when you do a five day. I’m just trying to figure out. So this will be my last question. So obviously, we have a lot of people here today to talk about their request for new courts, whether it’s magistrates or judges or whatever. But in your history, have you ever seen a county come to us and say, we’re going to downsize because we have some significant underutilization. In fact, even in counties that are here today to ask for courts, some of their individual courts clearly are underutilized. Is there a solution in this weighted caseload system to fix that? I have never seen a county come and say that they have more judicial resources than they need. This is the committee that the courts come to to say we need additional resources. So is this the appropriate form to do that? Are they, is that the only way for a county, when they see that they’re being underutilized, for them to delete a court? I believe it’s the only way, and I think that’s part of your statutory authority is you’re the ones that make the decision. Okay. So thank you. I appreciate that. That was helpful. Other questions? Yes, go ahead, representative. Thank you, mister Chairman. Thank you for being here today. I have a question about the probate court. How many counties have a probate court in the state of Indiana? There’s only one statutorily authorized probate court in Indiana. It’s in La Porte. Is St. Joe County. St. Joe, I’m sorry? St. Joe county, yes. Why is that? I have no idea. Okay. Do you know when that was established? It’s been a long time. I have no idea when it was established. And in other counties, who handles that work? It would depend on how the county has their cases allocated. They can determine that. I know Marion county has one court that handles all probate work, but it’s not called a probate court in statute, so. All right, thank you. Any other questions from the committee? One other thing. Can you just, again, you and I talked on the phone. I think this is helpful. Can you explain why these numbers are not whole numbers? They’re like percentage numbers. Yeah. Because you think if you look at the judicial halves, it should always be a whole number. You’ve got a whole person. Well, many counties supplement the statutorily authorized judicial officers with county paid referees or commissioners. They may be part time. Also some counties, they may be authorized to have a magistrate, but they serve part time, part of the time in circuit, part, superior one. Part and superior two. That’s how we came up. That’s why some of the judicial halves are partial numbers. Okay, any other questions? Last go for. Thank you, sir. Very much. Appreciate it. Okay, we are going to go in alphabetical order so that there’s no favoritism. Elkhart county. Does Elkhart county want to come up and present? Please just introduce yourself to the committee so we know who you are. Am I on? Okay. Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you for having me. My name is Christine Osterday, and I’m the judge of Elkhart superior court number one. I’m from Elkhart county, obviously. So I’m here not only by myself, but I’m here with our court administrator, Ross Maxwell, Elkhart Superior court judge number six, David Bonfiglio. Also Susie Weirich, Elkhart county commissioner. And Linda Rogers is our senator from our area. So we were here in 2022, and at that time we had a need, and the need was certainly quantified in the data that was available at the time. However, we walked away without having that need met. We’re here in 2024 because we still have a need that exists. And what I would like to do for the committee that I hope will be helpful for you is to give you an update regarding the information that we provided to you at that time. So when we were here in 2022, we were in a very transitional period in Elkhart county. So for those of you who are not aware or maybe don’t remember some of the specifics, Elkhart county was organizing, not only our courts, but we are also in the process of a major building project. Chief Justice Rush had the opportunity to do a tour of our new courthouse project. So in Elkhart county, we have two courthouses, one in Elkhart, one in Goshen. We are building a consolidated courthouse in Goshen, which is our county seat. Our county has funded us. It’s $100 million plus project. It is a trauma informed building project. And that is something that we are all mindful of. The fact that people who come into court are there not because they necessarily want to be there, and they’re coming in with a variety of issues, and we want to try to ease that stress immediately as they walk through the door. One additional thing that we have done since we were here in 2022, and thanks very much to Judge Bonfiglio and his efforts, we have established an access to justice center. It will be much larger in our new courthouse, but we did not want to wait until we moved into the new courthouse. We have that up and running. We have the commitment of our bar associations who are going to commit volunteer lawyer hours. We have it staffed, we have uniform forms for people to fill out and it’s almost immediately upon coming into the courthouse. We also now have a certified pretrial release program which we continue to innovate and do the best that we can for the people that we serve to ensure that we are balancing the interests of public safety as well as protecting the presumption of innocence for those who are incarcerated pre conviction. In addition to that, we have a certified drug court. We hope at some point in time to be able to expand our problem solving courts, but we have a very robust drug court program that we’re very proud of. I’m the chair of our community corrections advisory board. We continue to make improvements and innovations to our work release program and other monitoring programs. So as things stand now, we have seven elected judges and we have three magistrates. So when we were not successful when we were here in 2022, in getting our three magistrates that we had requested, we were scrambling. There’s just no other way to put that. We were in trouble and we put together some work amongst the judges. First agreed that we are going to ask the council to have positions funded for referees. It has not been an ideal process and when we were here at our annual fall conference last year, Judge Bonfiglio and I received panicked communication from our court administrator that our request was not going to pass. We were not going to get our referees. The only way that we got our referees was because we had to ensure to our financial body that there would be little to no fiscal impact on our county. We cut case management positions for our unified family court, which is another innovation that we’ve put in place. And the goal is one family, one judicial officer. So we had to cut staffing for that. We had to cut other staffing in order to make that happen. But we have no guarantee that the council is going to continue to fund that. We are grateful for our council and our council support. Supports us. But anybody who’s not familiar with Elkhart county, if you remember 2008, we were the center of the economic crisis in the United States, not just the state of Indiana, the United States. So that is always in the back of the minds of us, as well as our fiscal leaders. So that is our concern. We want to give assurance to the people that we serve that they are going to be served in a timely fashion and a consistent fashion. We also want to make those positions attractive to qualified applicants. As it is now, our referees are doing just as much work as our magistrates for less pay and less assurance that they are going to have a job from year to year. In addition, having referees creates more of a burden on the judges. And burden is maybe not the proper word to use, but for lack of a better term, because referees have less independence than magistrates. A judicial officer, a judge, is required to review all of those orders rather than letting them act independently. And that’s different than how a magistrate operates. So it does ease a burden somewhat from us, but it also does not fully ease that burden. And as to Senator Brown’s concerns, and I apologize if I’m not saying that correctly, as far as concerns with senior judges, I just want to tell you that we are using senior judges when we are able to do so in northern Indiana, and I trust the numbers as far as how many senior judges overall are available in the state of Indiana. We are Elkhart county. We’re the northern part of the state. And if those senior judges are available in Marion County, I can assure you they’re not traveling to Elkhart county to handle our cases. We have really two or three senior judges that we are able to use, none of whom are in our county. We have no senior judges in Elkhart County. I had a senior judge in Laporte county who was kind enough to assist me when I was at a training program. Laporte county is an hour time difference. And for those of you who aren’t familiar with Laporte county, where winter is terrible, it’s challenging to get some of those senior judges over there. I can tell you that in Elkhart county next month, I have offered my courtroom, because I don’t have a trial, to one of my judicial colleagues who is going to have a murder trial in my courtroom while a senior judge simultaneously is handling a criminal trial in her courtroom. So even though we are using senior judges when we are not available to be in the office, we are also doing what we can with senior judges with the space that we currently have to try to move our docket and serve our people. I think I’ve probably exceeded my five minutes and I’m happy to answer any questions that you have. Yes, thank you, Senator Brown. Thank you Mister chairman. Thank you very much. Which court do you serve for? I’m sorry, I’m in Elkhart Superior court number one. Okay. So what’s interesting is, and thank you for your testimony and my concern is that the caseload baseline is the 213 days. And so your court for example is, at least in this study, just as an example at 87 really close to being fully utilized. And Elkhart county seems to be close to that a little bit over on some. But when you look at the caseload for some counties they are underutilized by half. And if you average it out, the county itself may look like it needs a judge. But I’m curious. Well, I’m not going to ask you this because that would be awkward, but I would be curious to hear how within the county the judges allocate that workload. Because some of the caseload reports look significantly off is how I’m going to put it. But that’s for you. In particular though, I’m interested in if you know historically why 213 days was set as the baseline. I heard that for the first time today. But in hearing Mister Weiss explain to that, as far as 213 days, it makes sense. Just again, when you back out, holidays, when you back out, weekends when you back out, our spring conference and our fall conference. And I can tell you, Senator Brown, I don’t know that most of the judges in Elkhart county are taking six weeks vacation. I don’t know that many of us are taking any sick days unless we are nearly on our deathbed. I woke up Monday morning not feeling well. Too bad. I had a full docket. I was in court until after 06:00 at night handling my docket. And to give you some context to my docket, my docket, I handle all of the domestic violence in Elkhart County. I handle all of the sexual violence in Elkhart county, other violent offenses in Elkhart county, which is not an easy docket. So the numbers and I’m just from my perspective are a bit deceptive as far as what we’re carrying. But I can assure you this because we are in the process of our divisional system. This is the first year that we have been in our divisional system. Judges meet regularly in Elkhart county. My colleague, Judge Bellin one day realized that another judge had way too heavy of a docket, ran a simultaneous docket with that judge to try to make sure to ease the burden on her. We are continuing to innovate. We’re continuing to talk with each other, what we need to do to evenly distribute the load so that it eases the burden not only on us, but first and foremost that we serve our, our constituents in the best way possible in the way that they deserve to be served. Yeah, I do. I appreciate that. And I particularly have been concerned, I certainly was concerned during COVID in terms of individuals constitutional rights with respect to the right to speedy trial, addressing their witnesses, et cetera. That was a significant concern for me. Not my concern anymore. But I guess I just, if it’s true this turns out to be seven and a half weeks of vacation or non court time, and I guess my concern is if that’s not the real number, if it’s, if the baseline should be more than 213, then let’s work with that, because it’s hard. When you put these numbers in, you add another five days, you add two weeks. So it’s five and a half weeks off. If you add ten days, there’s barely a court in the entire state that is not at where they should be. And I know, I’m sorry, and I know that it’s not apples to apples with some of the courts in terms of the types of cases there. And that’s not what we see. Right. We see in your county, for example, superior court one through six and a circuit court. We don’t see the different judges in the types of cases that they have, criminal, civil, et cetera. But that’s a concern for me. Not in your particular county, but that’s a concern for me looking at this generally. But I appreciate your testimony. Thank you, Senator Brown. Your concern is valid. And I want to touch a little bit on Chief Justice Rush’s point that she made, is that, and I can just tell you anecdotally, I can tell you for me personally, if I don’t schedule a doctor’s appointment for myself six months in advance, I have no assurance that I’m going to have court time or that I’m going to be away from my court to do that. I have hearings scheduled every week. I have trials scheduled nearly every week, and I don’t know until the last minute whether that’s going to go out. And if it goes out, then I’m not getting the credit. So to speak for my time because I’m not actually in court. But I had to schedule it because it was going to go and then it’s resolved last minute and it goes out, but I’m still scheduled. I can’t decide to take a vacation for the following week because I’d already been scheduled and it’s just too last minute. Good luck getting a doctor’s appointment that short of notice. You know, schedule all of my appointments outside of working hours when I’m able to do so. Just because we are so scheduled that, you know, it makes it almost impossible. But even though we’re so scheduled, they go out last minute and we just don’t have that court time. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t there working. And I don’t know if I’m just rambling or explaining this very well that I think the numbers are a bit deceptive. It’s just the overall point that I’m trying to make. Mister chairman, can I make. Yes, go ahead. The judges are required to supervise probation. If you have a Casa department, you’ve got to supervise that. You’ve got to sign the orders and be in your queue. You’ve got community corrections, you’ve got meeting with your county council. So when you talk about time off or 90 minutes of not working, really the administrative responsibility by things that you are required either by rule or statute to do, would you say on average or a chunk of what your judicial day or week or time look at? Absolutely. Absolutely. All of those things that the chief justice has mentioned. And as I’ve stated, I’m the chair of our community corrections advisory board. I spent 2 hours with the director of our community corrections just checking in with her and seeing how things were going and preparing for our quarterly meeting that we have this Friday morning. So we definitely have other obligations such as that, that we have to do. It’s not uncommon that I’m in my office and I’m working and Judge Bowers, who’s next door, will pop in and say, hey, I have this issue that came up and we’re talking and we’re working and we’re working through those things. I go down to Judge Bonfiglio’s office to run something by him regularly too. In addition to those supervisory and administrative responsibilities, we are constantly working together, collaborating. Yes, sorry. Yes, go ahead. Representative Garcia Wilburn. Thank you. So I think I just want to take an attempt to try to summarize what you’re saying. It would be unfair for us to try to take a typical 40 hours workweek in which most of us go from a eight to 439 to five schedule. It’s really impossible, is what I’m hearing you say, quantify the number of hours that you are actually working. So when we look at something like vacation or time off, it’s very hard for you to even plan for them. Those things such as doctors appointments, vacations, because of all of the unexpected and incidental things that might come up on a day’s work for you. Is that a fair summary? Yes. Thank you. And in addition to that, we have an on call rotation. So when we’re on call, we get calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We go to the prosecutor’s office on our Saturday morning on. On call to review probable cause arrests from the night before. I think the last time I did not take my laptop device with me on vacation was when I was out of the country, which was five years ago. I don’t take a vacation where I’m not working and I don’t have the lux I know my colleagues have need for senior judges to be handling hearings in court. I don’t think it’s fair to use that limited resource when I can bring my device with me on vacation. I can work my cues. I can do my work. I don’t know what a non working vacation looks like. Other questions for this witness? Yes, Senator Taylor. Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you, judge, for your testimony. Judge, I try to. Instead of dealing with the actual result, I try to deal with the system. So forgive me if I ask you a question that. That you might not have an answer to, but I’m looking at your six courts. Which one? How many of them are criminal courts? We have four criminal courts, superior courts one, three, four, and circuit. And circuit has additional obligations in addition to criminal. All right, so I’m gonna wager to say that a higher percentage of courts want the four that you indicated are the ones that are over. Under or over utilized. Am I correct? Well, and it’s difficult, and I think, to borrow a phrase of somebody previously, we’re not comparing apples to apples. I agree. So I would imagine your criminal docket is quite a bit larger. The criminal docket is in. We have different pressures, I would say, in the criminal docket than what there are in some of the other dockets. And that’s not to undermine the importance of litigants getting a quick result. But, for instance, and I do still have some civil cases, and I always have to tell my civil litigants, I’m giving you a date that I think is a date certain as far as a trial. But I’m telling you right now, if I have a speedy trial request or an urgent criminal trial that needs to be heard, you are going to be put on the back burner. And I’m sorry for that, but that’s just the way that it is. Right. And so the reason why I’m asking these questions is because there’s a symptom there that I see across a lot of counties where we see a lot of increased criminal cases coming to your docket. Are you discussing any alternatives to, you know, somebody having, I don’t know, let’s say marijuana possession, having to go to your docking instead of getting a civil penalty? Would that help? Are there other things that we can do? Other just continue to add magistrates across the state because we see an increase and dockets, and I’m going to assume a majority of them are based on the criminal cases that are coming before you. I think that your concern is fair as far as your, and if I understand correctly, I think that your concern is getting at the root of the issues and trying to be maybe preventative rather than reactionary to what we’re seeing. Absolutely. But is a judiciary we can’t continue down this path is what I’m trying to say. Certainly, I can assure you that in Elkhart county, the judges are open, willing to additional problem solving courts that could potentially address this issue. Okay. But, and I don’t want to say that we’re in the same position as you, but we get what comes to us. We don’t have control over the cases that are filed. But, but I, I will assure you that we are receptive and open and, and even though I don’t have a problem solving court, I do what I can to try to be innovative, to try to connect people to resources and try to do what we can to serve those that come before me. I appreciate that. And that’s why I felt like it probably wasn’t fair to ask you that question. But again, I’m talking about the actual symptoms of the problem that we have. And I think we’re going to have that same thing with a couple more counties that are going to be coming forward today. I appreciate your testimony, and thank God you get to elect your judges. Any other questions for this witness? CNN judge, before you leave, I just want to confirm the ask. So you’re asking for three additional state mandated, state paid magistrates, and the plan is whether you get three, two or one is to replace a referee with that position. Is that right? That’s exactly right. And I appreciate that you helping me not lose sight of the important task at hand and what our task is. Thank you. So that is correct. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you for your time. Okay. Hamilton county, good morning. I’m Judge Brown with Hamilton County Superior Court two. Thank you to the chairperson for entertaining our request today. Thank you also to the vice chair. It’s nice to meet all of you today. Also, Judge Andrew Block came with me today. He’s our new circuit court judge who was appointed earlier this year by the governor. Our request is for four additional judicial officers, two of those being magistrates, two of those being elected. It’s referenced in your, in the packet that we provided to you. We hope that the two additional magistrates would be able to start or be allocated to our county as soon as, at some point next year, and that the two elected judges would not be able to be. Those positions wouldn’t be filled until they’d run for election in 2026. So they wouldn’t start until January 1 of 2027. Could we use those judges now? Absolutely. Our need is tracking. So the data that the weighted case, let’s say that you were provided, shows basically a deficiency of approximately four judicial officers. We keep track of in our county every month of the cases that are filed. And you will note on page two of our submission that it shows the first six months of this year. The first six months of this year showed that we needed 17.2 judges. We just got a juvenile magistrate from the Supreme Court, which puts us at 13. So that would still show four judges short. However, after we got the data from August. So adding two more months of data, I don’t have this for you, but I did tell Chairman Jeter that we will more than happy to supplement. Our average went up to 17.67 judicial officers. Now you’re like, what’s the big deal on that? That’s only half a judge more work, right? No, it’s not, because it’s a rolling average. So to go from a 17.2 to a 17.7 in two months means that roughly 19 to 20 judges worth of work came in the door during those two months to bring your average up. We think by the end of the year, we’re probably going to see a number somewhere around 18 to 18 and a half is where we’ll end the year at. Time will tell. I mean, we even had to correct our presentation with our own local county council and commissioners because our even using the six months of data, it pushed our average, what we expected for the year to go up by another 500 cases. So what’s going on in Hamilton county? Crazy. Unprecedented growth. We currently rank number one on the list for need. If you look at the district that we’re in, district twelve, we have Tipton, Clinton, and Boone counties, where I think we’re number two on that list. We utilize three problem solving courts. We currently have a drug court that judge Najjar runs. I’m the backup judge for that court and fill in for him. I will be filling in, actually, next Thursday afternoon for that. We have a veterans court that’s run by Judge Murphy. And then a commercial court was started in our county roughly three months ago. And I’m the commerce. Excuse me, three years ago, I’m the commercial court judge in Hamilton county, one of ten commercial court judges across the state. And so, like Senator Cook, we’ve met before, judicial administration, and I believe it’s commercial courts committee, possibly Hamilton County. I didn’t grow up here. I’m from Phoenix. I came to Indiana, go to law school, moved to Noblesville in 1997. Noblesville was a small town then. In the past almost 30 years, Hamilton county has exploded. I mean, I remember on 37, I could go from 32 and 37 all the way to Fishers and never hit a stoplight. You saw nothing but corn and chickens and cows, and that’s it. But not anymore. Those days have come and gone. Our population growth currently we sit at roughly 370,000 people. And in the next 20 years, we’re supposed to be sitting at 550,000 people. Now, I don’t know where all those people are going to live, but that’s what the expectation is. That is what is happening. Our jail has already been expanded, so our request has nothing to do with the jail population. We also have the support of all our fiscal bodies. Hamilton County Council, Hamilton county commissioners, the sheriff, the prosecutor. Everybody is rolling in the right direction. Everybody’s working together. We’re expanding our building. Shovels are expected to hit the ground. Around roughly in the next couple months, where we’re going to be expanding our courthouse, roughly 66%, most of which is to accommodate the courts, more court spaces. And they’re not all the same size courtrooms. We’re trying to take a little bit of a Marion county approach. We have some, you know, right sized courtrooms for the right size matters. So we’re trying to be mindful of the taxpayer dollars and not just create giant courtrooms and at the same time, also try to keep a personal touch in the building when people come, because that’s what people expect when they come to court. They want to know where they’re supposed to go. They want to see real people. They don’t want to be treated like a number. Now, court services, they did provide the weighted caseloads to you folks. And as I said, I put in on page two, you can see what’s going on in our county. As far as the cases. We had 20,000 cases filed in 2020. So if you look on page six of your submission, that was 2020. We are expecting by the end of this year to be over 28,000 cases. And if I only. And that’s with a 15% increase year over year. If we only go with a six to 7% increase over the next two years, we’re going to be sitting over 31,000 cases filed in our county over a six year period of time, 11,000 cases per year more. I mean, it’s. The numbers are just off the charts. We know it’s a big ask to what we’re asking for with four judges. We understand that. We understand there’s problems. You know, when you look at the statewide number, when we’re sitting at a 0.98 or 0.99, I think for the utilization rate for judges, and I think that the growing counties create a problem for the General assembly. It’s a tough issue in trying to decide how do you reallocate, or do you reallocate? Somebody was mentioning this last week at our judicial conference. Those are tough questions. It’s not as easy when you run a. I mean, I had a business, I ran a law practice with a couple offices for over a decade. And when you’re making personnel decisions, you just make the decision. You just do it. But in Indiana, we have 92 counties, and those judges all have to make decisions. The state’s making decisions. It’s a political problem more than just a straight up personal personnel type issue. And if we’re talking about reallocation, and I empathize with all of you because it’s, I mean, I’m staying in my lane because that’s not my problem to deal with. I’m doing the best I can just to deal with my docket. You can see, I think one of the questions someone had asked had to do with the types of cases that are being filed where we need the help in our county. And you’ll note in pages seven through nine of our submission, it’s on the civil side. That is where the work happens, I think. Senator Taylor, you had asked about criminal cases. I have a major felony docket one day a week. That day is today. And so this morning before I came here, I had to sentence somebody on a nursing case. And that docket, somebody asked, well, wouldn’t you rather just do civil all the time? I’m like, no, because I have four days of a civil docket and I have one day a week of major felony. When I get done with my major felony docket, most days I don’t have any homework from those cases. When I mean homework, I think, Senator Brown, you’ve mentioned this number of days or the hours worked or something like that. I don’t know about sick days because I don’t take them. I don’t know about six to seven weeks of vacation because I don’t get that either. But I do know that my wife gets irritated at me because I spend probably two to 3 hours a night, five to six nights a week at home, working, working my cue, working on divorce decrees, working on commercial court cases. I mean, that’s like twelve to 15 hours a week that I’m at home. Judge Osterday, you’re right. I don’t know what a vacation is. It doesn’t involve me taking my laptop home. Whether I go down to Alabama to our friend’s place, I spend a half day doing video zoom hearings, working my queue, getting orders pushed out. So back in the day, we were limited in terms of you had paper files and paper orders and you couldn’t take that stuff with you. But now everything’s on a laptop, so you have access to everything, which is great that we have these things, but it also means that we’re not unplugging from our work. And so that’s very challenging. And then as far as the, I think the comment somebody made about six hour workdays or six and a half or something like that, I wish I had a six and a half hour workday. I don’t know what that looks like as far as that type of this is a judge job is a 24/7 job. I’m on call every 13th week, middle of the night, getting phone calls for search warrants. So, I mean, we have the judges in this, the judges that are here. This is the job that we have. Yes. We chose it. We love our jobs. I wouldn’t be a commercial court judge if I didn’t like it. I don’t have to be a commercial court judge, but I like the cases. But it involves work. It involves time. And our caseload, I believe, supports. Request. I know that, you know, again, it’s a big ask. If we don’t get the four judges. Okay, fine. I think we’ll be back here in two years asking again. I think we will still be at the top of the list for need. If Hamilton county continues to grow as it is, I expect that I’m going to spend the rest of my judicial career coming to visit you folks every other year saying, hey, we need another judge. We need another judge. Because that’s just what’s happening in a growing county. And, you know, as far as, I don’t want it to make it sound like we’re panicking in Hamilton county, because we’re not. I have a couple rules in my courtroom. One is that there’s no crying. Secondly, there’s no panicking. And I think all that’s happening right now is that we’re planning for growth. We, in terms of the county, it’s not just the judges in our county that are working on this. It is everyone in Hamilton county, all of our elected officials are all on the same page. Having local government work together to get something solved is spectacular. And, you know, I think it’s really, at the end of the day, yes. Is it stressful? Yes. But at the same time, it’s exciting to be in a growing county. It has its own problems that it presents to us. And we just appreciate that if we get to get the assistance from the General assembly along with all our other government officials and get this request happened. Thank you. With that, I ask for your support. Thank you. Questions for Judge Brown. Yes, Senator palace. Thank you, mister chairman. Judge, you hit the nail on the head when you talked about your, I mean, I’m looking at your report for the first time today and it looks like your major felonies seems to be trending stagnant as far as criminal cases. Your f four, five and six and criminal misdemeanor seems to be going up the lower level. Felony should be. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah, they’re going up. They’re going up some. But where the real burden is on the civil side, that’s where we’re really noticing things. Well, unfortunately, on the civil side, we can’t really do anything about the underlying issues in a civil case to individuals. But for us as a general assembly, we’re public policy makers and we can talk about some of the remedies to hopefully actually lower your caseload. See, nobody’s, I don’t, I haven’t heard anybody yet say anything about what we could do as public policymakers to lower your caseload, which is giving a little bit more subjectivity to some of these cases that I’m sure you’re seeing. And I just. Have you thought about that? Had the judges got together and said, hey, you know, Mister prosecutor, you know, a 19 year old with, you know, open container, you know, you know, with possession of a controlled substance. Can we do something about that? Has there been any discussion of that? Well, what kind of substances are you referencing, sir? Because, I mean, are you talking about call them illegal. Let’s just call them illegal substances. I don’t want to get into this. Well, are we talking marijuana or are you talking something like Xanax? Well, or fake Xanax pills. Whatever. Whatever. I mean, the scariest thing I’ve come across in the past year is hearing about what we’re seeing is where drug dealers, when they’re cutting, what people don’t realize is they’re taking pills, crushing them down, mixing them with other stuff, reforming new pills, and they don’t have the quality control that like Lily has when they create a pill. And so what happens is you could have a person with fentanyl, that fentanyl is not evenly distributed in that pill. I agree. So I don’t know what the public policy issue for me. Yes, sir. Is the person who’s purchasing them has a drug problem. Okay. And putting them in jail is not going to solve the drug problem. Okay. Okay. So what I’m trying to get is the symptoms of what we see across the state. I’m sure we’re going to hear it from some of the smaller counties that they’ve seen an increase in drug possession charges. Fentanyl, marijuana, whatever. But the point I’m trying to make is, are we at the point now where we need to start talking about some public policy issues to eliminate some of these things going to your court? Well, something like that, sir, I think is a, that’s a discussion for the General assembly to make. I don’t think it’s. That’s where you’re at. I understand that. My job is just to deal with the laws, folks write them. Okay. And I do my best in that regards. But I think in terms of determining what the policy. Should be. I mean, I think that’s the General Assembly’s. They got to figure that out, what they want to do in that regard. But I mean, I respect that what you’re saying. I want to stay in my lane. No, no, no, don’t stay in your lane, because to me, we’re going to have to turn off the spigot real soon. I’ve served on this committee for several years and there has not been one summer that we haven’t seen at least five or six courts asking for us to pay for another magistrate because of their caseload. So all I’m saying is, listen, I serve in the minority here, so I’m not going to dictate whether or not you get your play, get your magistrate. But I can tell you from the words that I’m hearing, the questions I’m seeing, we need to start talking about some other issues. On a good note, I just want to say to Hamilton county, thank you for putting this in your report, but I saw something about the ethnic makeup of your court. And as a lot of people on this committee know, I am one of those who always talks about ethnic makeup of the court. And it looks like Hamilton county, with a 5% minority black population, has a 15% judiciary makeup magistrates. And that’s a heck of a job for where you were in the past. Thank you for doing that and making sure that our courts reflect the communities that they actually are in. So thank you. Yeah, very much. Appreciate it, sir. Senator Brown. Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you for your testimony. Judge, quick couple quick questions. So your population is increasing exponentially. You seem to have a slightly more litigious society there, rather than a criminal element. I will just put a caution that anybody who suggests they’ll reduce their caseload in court caseload by not enforcing the laws we passed would not be looked upon very happily, at least from my perspective. But I would agree with you moving on. So at some point, hopefully, your population maximizes itself. There’s no more houses to be built in Hamilton county and therefore no more need for new courts. You’re not going to be in that position anytime soon and you may be retired by them. But do you have any suggestions on what we do with counties that have underutilization? I don’t. I spoke with Mister Jeter about this. It’s really, I think it’s a real challenge. I think it’s going to take a whole, the whole legislature is going to have to be able to look at a very big picture and be, and be able to analyze it and say, look, here’s the courts where we need, where we need to make some changes. One thing that I posited to Mister Jeter yesterday was we have judicial districts, and as I mentioned earlier, we have Clinton in our district, district twelve. I mean, I feel like I’m in the Hunger Games sometimes, but it’s Clinton, Tipton, Boone and us. And, but there’s districts all over our state and some, I think there’s a couple counties that might be one county districts. I think Allen county might be one. Marion County I think is another. I’m not as good on this issue in terms of all the numbers the chief would be able to clarify, but then we have, there’s several where there’s three and four counties together. Well, what if there was a way that in terms of filing instead of cases being filed in a county, what if you had like a district set up where you kind of broaden the geography just a little bit? And maybe, you know, you may have to have a circuit court. Let’s say you have four counties and they’ve got, you know, five judges, you know, of work, but there’s six judges. Well, maybe you have to take one away, but each county still has a circuit court judge. And maybe that circuit court judge doesn’t work in that county courthouse anymore. Maybe one of the courthouses they don’t utilize anymore, maybe they use less courthouses. But in order to kind of consolidate some of that, it would take a whole of government approach because you’d have to have the county councils and the county commissioners on board and your sheriffs that are going to complain because, you know, where are you going to put which jails are you going to use? Your prosecutors are going to complain. But is it possible to make that work? Probably on some level, but it’s going to take everybody at the table and everybody coming in together to try to consolidate those kind of issues, and it’s going to require the assistance of the state to do that. This is just, I’m just kind of throwing out there as a potential thought when you to consolidate some of the smaller counties or the less, let’s say the rural counties in terms of their districts, and it might be a way to make that work. I don’t know, but it’s just, it’s a whole of government approach and I don’t know if there’s the political will to make that happen because that, again, that’s, well, there’s certainly the political will to rein in the budget. Let’s just put it that way. Amen. And so, you know, I’ve only served on this now, my second time. And two years ago, we had requests, and none of them were awarded because of budgetary issues. And it may be a whole of government. Solution, but the whole of government right now has never brought a solution. And your branch of government comes to us asking for the request, but never comes to us with a solution on those counties which is obviously above your pay grade, but with how to fix the counties that are over utilized or underutilized, so to speak. I just have one more question for you, though. So with respect to the public defenders Commission, does your county participate in that? We have not, but we’re in discussions, we’re looking into it at this point in time. And why haven’t you before? It’s just something that hasn’t really been pushed. I think one of the questions I have about it, and like I said, we’re in our gathering information stage. We started really looking into this about two months ago. I know that there’s a reimbursement element where the state kicks money back to the county, is my understanding. It’s a certain percentage of that money. But then you have. And then you’re paying a person to be the public defender, like chief public defender in your county, but that person may or not be actually doing cases, but they’re doling out cases. And the question is, okay, so you add one person who’s a full time employee with benefits, that’s going to get paid, and, okay, the state’s going to pay some of that money back. Well, what happens with your cadre of public defenders that are doing all the work in all the different courts and how do they get paid? And because I had a public defender yesterday ask me, he’s taken a contract over in Madison county, for example, and he gets health insurance. It’s the only reason he’s driving over to Madison county from Hamilton county. It’s because he gets health insurance. I’m like, okay, I get that having health insurance is kind of a big deal when you’re in your fifties. So I need to make a phone call to Judge Dudley because I didn’t know that Madison county was doing this. So I was going to call Judge Dudley over in Madison county and say, hey, how are you guys funding this? Because we don’t offer health insurance to our public defenders in Hamilton county, and I think Delaware county is another county that is also doing this. I don’t know how that is all working logistically and where the funding is coming from. That’s kind of a question. And so we’ve got this public defender council issue that is being discussed, and then we have other counties that are trying other things in terms of maybe getting health insurance to public defenders because they can’t fill the spots. And, I mean, you have the issue in Indiana, and I don’t think this is a strange, an unknown issue to the general assembly, but maybe it is, but there’s a lawyer shortage, and so everybody is competing for the same attorneys. And I don’t know if this is kind of a step in that direction where Delaware county can’t fill their public defender attorney slots and they’re having to put something extra on the table in order to get attorneys to come to Delaware county or to Madison county from another, you know, from other jurisdictions. So. And I know that with our probation department and with our community corrections department, I serve on the community corrections board. We have trouble filling our community correction officer positions, and people will go, you know, so everybody’s robbing from each other. So the employee has a lot of power right now because they’re, oh, they’re paying more in Marion county, or they’re paying more in Tipton county, or we’ll pick up somebody from some other county, you know, and everybody’s doing this to each other, but there’s a shortage of people. And so I don’t know how we fix that issue either. So there’s a lawyer shortage issue. You’ve got probation and community corrections officer positions. We even have trouble at our last board meeting was that two weeks ago that they were talking about the night shift at the community corrections, and they can’t get people to fill those spots. We got to have those people watch. They’re there at night, you know, how much more do we have to pay in Hamilton county to get that person to work a night shift or third shift? So these are some of the challenges that we have, and I know these challenges are the same challenges everybody has in other counties. Does that answer your question at least a little bit? Other questions, just to confirm, judge, before you step away, your ask is four full time judicial officers, two elected, two magistrates, correct? Yes. Yes. Go ahead. Yes, senator. Go ahead. Mister chairman, let me make sure I understand how it works. If there are two elected judges, the county pays for. No, the state pays for the elected and the magistrates, and we pay 100% salary and benefits. That’s my understanding, yes. Okay. The commissioners and the referees are county funded to kind of stopgap when they. When they need somebody, and we don’t give it to them. So when you hear commissioner and referee, they’re paying. Counties are paying. Okay. But as far as the judicial officers, correct, do we have 100% of the tab right. Okay. All right. And then just one clarification that served on the public defender commission. It’s kind of interesting. We just had a meeting last week. You are. Hamilton county is considering being a partner, but I’ve never, in my years on the public defender commission, I’ve never seen a county have to pay more money to be a part of the PD commission. Just so you know. I mean. Right. I still haven’t understood why certain counties are not part of it. I think it’s the caseload requirement. You talked about other stuff. That’s another very. Public defenders are overworked, underutilized, in my opinion, but definitely overworked. And that’s one of the things that the counties don’t want to come in because we have a requirement that your PD’s not have so many cases. So. And that is a function of the judge, not of us, but of the judge assigning cases to public defenders. So I hope you guys join, because I think it would be a benefit to your constituents, if not and financially beneficial to the county. Thank you for that. Thank you. In response to that, one of the questions I had with respect to the public defender council is the public defenders themselves is if they take cases in Madison county and they’re limited to a number of. I’m just using Madison as an example. They take x number of cases or they’re limited or capped to a number of cases in that county, and then they can take a contract in another county and do the same thing. Are we really. Is it. Are we really fixing a problem if the idea is that they’re overworked? Like how. How hard is that? Captain, that’s something I haven’t gotten. There’s a way we wait that when they have multiple contracts. Gentlemen, I’m going to try to keep us on track. Sorry we veered a little bit off, so. No, that’s okay. I mean, I appreciate the discussion. Any other questions for Judge Brown before I let him go? Thank you, sir. Appreciate your take. Thank you all very much. All right, let’s move on to Lawrence county. Is there a representative here from Lawrence county? Of course there is. Come on up. Thank you. Good morning. Chairman Jeter, vice chair Brown, and members of the committee. I’m here from Lawrence Circuit Court. My name is Ana Gowdy. I’m the juvenile referee. And we’ve already heard a lot of discussion about referees. But the specific ask from Lawrence county and from Lawrence Circuit court is that you would consider proposed bills. They are authored by Senator Cook, who is here today, and those one or the other both not necessary, but that there would be an amendment to the current Indiana code 3131 three. That is the statute that allows juvenile courts to order or assign juvenile magistrates. And currently you must have a population of 50,000, and it would be our proposed amendment that you would lower it to 45,000. This does affect more than Lawrence county, in fact, about five counties, five or six. It’s unclear to me whether Shelby county meets 45,000 or is just under, but that would be the impact of that. And Lawrence Circuit court certainly would be included and then have an opportunity to convert its current juvenile referee position to a juvenile magistrate position. Just to explain as the juvenile referee what the docket looks like in Lawrence Circuit court and any other courts with juvenile referees. Although I will tell you, I think I’ve met one in my five years on the bench, other juvenile referee, and I think the reasons for that might become clear here in just a moment. The juvenile referee hears cases including child native services cases or chins, termination of parental rights cases, juvenile delinquency matters. In Lawrence Circuit court, the juvenile referee presides over a juvenile problem solving court. And those aren’t, again, that’s a small number, juvenile problem solving courts in Indiana, but we’re one of them. In addition, the juvenile referee hears 4d matters or enforcement of child support orders. Also paternity actions, determining custody, parenting time and child support decisions. And if I didn’t say so, also, here’s the termination of parental rights cases. That’s the docket, and that’s what Monday through Friday in the courtroom looks like for a juvenile referee, and similarly to a juvenile magistrate. In addition to those responsibilities, the juvenile referee and juvenile judicial officer in Indiana does take up extra initiatives. And I know other judicial officers have been before you this morning explaining it’s not all on the bench in the courtroom, although I will say the juvenile referee’s docket is robust. And usually we are in court Monday through Friday, almost the entire day. But when we’re not, we are taking up important initiatives and leadership roles. Your house enrolled act 1359, if you can recall, required a lot of local juvenile justice systems to look at how things are running. Requires leadership from your juvenile judicial officers, including creating diversion programs, which we have in Lawrence Circuit court, including looking at our detention policies, creating detention screening tools, also looking at. Our detention statistics for juveniles, and ensuring that we’re only detaining the right youth. All of those initiatives require time of the juvenile referee. And we are involved in JDAI on a local level. We have a local JDAI, and if you haven’t heard about JDAi, shoot me a private email, but that would take a lot more time than you have budgeted this morning. But JDI is an initiative that the juvenile judicial officer in Lawrence Circuit Court referee heads up and chairs. We have steering committee meetings, work group meetings, much work to be done and attend the state level. In addition to that, the juvenile referee is involved on work groups, juvenile justice initiatives, such as Youth Justice Oversight Committee, getting involved in that work and ensuring that we’re helping with reform and we’re doing our part. In addition, supports the volunteer programs such as CaSas, speaking to Casas during trainings. And those are just some of the ways that the juvenile judicial officer, juvenile referee and Lawrence circuit court goes beyond the docket. And that’s required to do a good job and serve the children and families in your community. That is required. And we’re talking about the most personal type cases. And we’re also looking at a time in history where there’s been an increase in substance use, there’s been an increase in mental and emotional troubles of children and families, and we’re stepping up to address those issues in a collaborative manner, working in our communities. That leadership is necessary to do the job right, but it does take more time. And if you look at materials, I think the juvenile referee would be better served as a juvenile magistrate in Lawrence Circuit court. For a number of reasons, the statistics included in your materials in juvenile court speak for themselves. In 95, when this position was created as a part time juvenile referee in Lawrence Circuit court, it was very much part time. The case numbers were lower. And in fact, Lawrence Circuit court shared this juvenile referee position with Jackson county at one point. However, it has become a full time position. And even in the last ten or eleven years, you can see in the statistics included in your material, we’ve gone from 2012, where there were two termination of parental rights cases, two in 2023, where there are 62. We’ve gone from Chin’s numbers around 30 cases in 2012, to now 120 last year. And I tell you that to make you realize all of that takes time and a judicial officer that’s dedicated to the work. We’re serving more. We’re serving more children and families because the work is there to be done. In addition, there are pitfalls and shortcomings to a referee position. You’ve already heard about that. Judge Osterday did a great job explaining that a referee must be reviewed by the supervising judge. All decisions that are written, all cases that are heard, any of those orders must be co signed by a supervising judge. In addition, the referee doesn’t have authority to do personnel or budgeting or administrative duties. That must all fall on the supervising judge. So you take some, some of the workload off of them, of course, by hearing those cases, but they then have to supervise all of your decisions. In addition, the juvenile referee, if were a juvenile magistrate, would function different in those times if theres a request for a change of judge, and I point that out because as a matter of course, our public defenders are moving for a change of judge in every single termination case. And whether thats right or wrong, they have the ability legally to do it. And so thats not for me to decide. Thats their decision and thats okay for their client. But what it creates for the courts is a system in a situation where the juvenile referee and supervising judge are moved off of all of those termination cases, and because of that, we can’t keep them in our court. Whereas if the juvenile referee was then a juvenile magistrate, the supervising judge is no longer signing off on those orders, could handle that case, and would be able to keep it in house in our court. We’re in a situation now where if our county can’t keep that case, we have judges traveling from Brown, I’m sorry, not Brown, Monroe, Green, Owen. To hear those cases, that takes a lot of time on their calendar. It’s a lot of time on the road. You better believe that’s that 90 admin minutes that are in that weighted caseload. And so those are some of the reasons. Another benefit of a juvenile magistrate, I would tell you fiscally, is that a juvenile magistrate, in my opinion, is a bargain for you all, in that you don’t pay for a judicial officer in full, but instead a juvenile magistrate, $41,393 by statute, is paid by the county that has that juvenile magistrate. In addition, in our court, this juvenile magistrate would hear 4d matters, and that’s given an opportunity for not only 4d reimbursement funds for the county, but also for the state. We’re looking into what that looks like, but there’s a potential that you could recoup funds because that juvenile magistrate would hear 40 matters and those funds would come back to the state. And again, it’s included in your materials. When you look at our weighted caseload and our severity of need vice chair Brown mentioned earlier there are some of you that don’t rank toward the top. Our. Caseload published number for Lawrence Circuit Court in Lawrence county was inaccurate. We’re lucky enough to have Mister Weiss here who reviewed that number for us and let us know that the Lawrence Circuit court’s problem solving court was not reflected when that was published, he revised that number. It’s included in your materials. It does indicate we need four judicial officers. So you might be sitting there thinking, what’s the problem? You have four judicial officers. We do. But we have been through all of the shortcomings of the referee. And I will indicate to you, although the state does not provide the funding for the position of juvenile referee, it is counted the exact same in your weighted caseload count and rankings as a state paid judicial officer. So I urge you to think about that when you’re looking at the rankings that some of those counties where you’ve included the referees and commissioners, we’re counted. And it affects our ranking and severity of need as the same as a state paid trust judicial officer when in fact the county is supporting the position. I will just tell you this. Our county is in a dire situation fiscally. They are having to make major cuts. They just cut a deputy prosecutor from the prosecutor’s office. They just cut our HR person and they’re having to make. So far they’ve made a total of $1.8 million cuts. And the juvenile referee in Lawrence county is one of the most high paid positions. And if they cut this position, I’m not telling you they will. Hopefully they’re not getting any ideas by listening to this legislative committee meeting this morning. But if they did, Lawrence county would go from having four to three and most certainly be the most the top of your list for severity of need. So I want to emphasize that to you today. I am humbled to do the work of juvenile referee. I love my docket. I love interacting with children and families, doing the best I can to serve the constituents. I think there’s no more important caseload. I am partial and I’m humbled to do the work, no matter whether it’s referee or juvenile magistrate. But I would just ask that you would please consider our request today. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions? Yes, Senator Brown. Thank you, mister Chairman. Thank you for your testimony. So that’s interesting that Mister Weiss helped you correct the data to show that you had a need. Are you aware of any corrections that need to be made to show that there isn’t the need that is suggested in this information? Vice chair Brown? I did not ask him that question. And so, no, I am not aware of other counties that are underutilized or have an underutilization and don’t. Do you understand my concern? Yes, absolutely, I understand your concern, yes. And I can’t speak to those other counties, but I know you’ve heard from the other judicial officers, and I can tell you the same. We work off the clock. On the clock. I have never taken a vacation in five years without working my queue, taking phone calls, attending Zoom meetings, having emergency Zoom hearings when youth have to be taken into custody or children have to be removed from homes. And I just want you to understand, we don’t. Or at least I can only speak for my court. We do not overutilize vacation time. In fact, I think perhaps in a year, I’ve maybe had one senior judge day, maybe, but we just do not. We work hard, and we want to because we know it’s a privilege to do this job. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Now, I got to do my spiel. Confirm. So, if you are approved of a magistrate, you will replace. Is that the plan, to replace the referee with the. Yes. Just to make clear, legislation currently has no way for a court to have a juvenile magistrate unless you have more than 50,000 in your population. And so we simply want to convert our current referee position, juvenile referee, to a juvenile magistrate. Same courts, same caseload. Nothing looks different with staff, but we really believe there’s a need for it. Okay. Thank you. Senator Brown, I have one more question. I do want to point out one thing. When you came two years ago, your population threshold was different, and or you would. And or at the time, there were more counties. And so are you suggesting that Shelby county wants to participate this or they would be eligible? Two years ago, it was still 45,000. Senator Cook, you can correct. I’m just saying I want to make sure, because that caused a bit of a kerfuffle two years ago. You’re asking this population change may incorporate other counties, but you are the only county requesting this. We are the only county at this time requesting a juvenile magistrate held. I just want to make that clear, because the last time, some counties after the fact, did not want to be part of this. And vice chair Brown, I would encourage you. I know you have a lot of materials to go through the affected counties. We got their opinions and positions. They’re at the very end of your materials that we have supplied. Make sure you’re only speaking for Lawrence county. Only speaking for Lawrence Circuit Court. But. Senator Cook. Yeah. And just to clarify. Thank you, Senator Brown. You will see options. You’ll see two proposed PD’s. One will deal with it within the framework of the population parameter, which would affect other counties. A second approach would just be only Lawrence county. So the committee will have some options here as we consider this request. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I appreciate it. The representative here from Spencer county. Morning. Good morning. I am Spencer Circuit court Judge John Dart, and it’s very good to see each and every one of you today. My situation is a little bit different. I’m from a small county, and I’m going to talk to you a little bit about that today. I grew up in Spencer county, and just to kind of get your bearings on the map, we’re all the way down on the Ohio river, located between Evansville and Louisville. And we should be known for Abraham Lincoln because that’s where he grew up. But we are actually more known for holiday World and Splashin Safari. They are located in our county. And I’m going to talk to you about that because that kind of makes our situation maybe a little different than some counties. You know, growing up in Spencer county, it was just a great place to grow up. And I lived a block from the courthouse, so I was able to kind of sneak down and watch lawyers in action. And it kind of spurred some of my interest in the law. And after going to law school, my wife, who is also from Spencer county, and I, we practiced for a while around Indianapolis. And then we decided to go back home to our home county in Spencer. And we decided to do that to raise a family. And to make a long story short, being a judge in a small county is a little bit of a different burden than some of these other judges that I hear about. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that. You know, I moved back to Spencer county, and we were immediately hit with a methamphetamine epidemic. I was in private practice. I did a lot of public defender work. That’s how I cut my teeth in litigation. And then I went ahead and ran for prosecutor. I was the elected prosecuting attorney for ten years in my home county. And then our judge retired, and I decided to seek the bench. And I have been judged now for 16 years in Spencer county. And I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about how different it is in a smaller county than some of these other requests that you’re hearing about. There is no one for me to pass the buck to. There is no one for me to walk down the hallway and ask questions of. When you’re a lone judge in a county, the buck stops with you. And it’s a big responsibility and I love it. I enjoy the responsibility. But there’s nowhere to hide. There’s nowhere to pass the buck. And the people depend on us in the judiciary to take care of business without fear or favor, enforce the rule of law and do justice. And there are people that are really hurting in today’s world. And our court system is extremely busy. At any one time. We have 6000 cases pending in the Spencer circuit court. As a single judge in the county, I am tasked to do everything from infractions and speeding all the way up to murder. I am tasked to do everything from small claims all the way up to multi million dollar litigation. And I have done medical malpractice. Whatever comes through the door, that’s what you have to do in a small county. It’s a daunting task, but it’s an enjoyable task. And so as I come before you today, I want you to be thinking about a judge in a small county. And what we encounter, because the judge in a small county is. Is kind of the go to person. Along with the prosecuting attorney. The judge in a small county is the policymaker. They set the policy, they call the meetings. We get things done. We help shape our county. So as a prosecutor and now as judge, just to name a few things besides sitting on virtually every board of significance in our county, I help start the the first domestic violence and sexual assault task force and protocols, the first victims advocate program for victims of crime, the first drug court problem solving court and helping our individuals and families get off judge, get off drugs. Rather. We have 29 participants in our drug court program right now. I helped start the first truancy court program with our county schools to keep our at risk kids in school and graduating. And we have 22 right now in our truancy. Court program. I started off the first family treatment court program in our court. It’s a problem solving court for families that are going through abuse and neglect situations to try to reunify them with the kids, with their families, and get the families turned around and doing things the right way. We have five in that it’s a relatively new program. I helped land a treatment facility for our addiction issues in our community. I helped land a residential facility for our homeless people in our community. I started a mock trial program where I bring in every elementary school every year, and they have a mock trial in the courtroom. It’s Humpty Dumpty. He sat on the wall, and when he fell off the wall, was it an accident or murder? They play all the parts. They do the jury trial. We get it done. And there’s a lot of lessons that go along with that, making them understand how the judiciary works, and most importantly, respect for the rule of law, which is really lacking nowadays. I started our first Casa program in our community. A couple years. We had 70 some volunteer casas in our community. Small county. We’re around 40 to 50 right now. I’m getting ready to swear in the next class next week. I helped start our community corrections program. Incarceration is not the answer for everybody. So we came up with our own electronic monitoring systems. We came up. Or their own sobriety, community service programs, all those things. I started our. I got us on the public defender commission, along with Judge Raile, the prior judge when I was prosecutor. We worked together to get that done. And I could go on and on, but I just wanted to bring those things to your attention, because in a small county, this is what judges do. We help shape policy. We help our community understand that we’re there for them, and we’re going to support them, and we’re going to give them the tools to be successful. So, you know, as I come before you today, a judge in a small community is so different. I don’t have somebody to delegate to every 17 days. I’m on call 24/7 every search warrant, every removal of a child, every juvenile detention, I’m the person they called. I’ve done it on the beach, I’ve done it at the ball games. When I’m coaching my kids, I’ve done it wherever I got to do it, because that’s my job. And like I heard before, I am not complaining. Being a judge is the best job in the world to help your community. But we do everything, in my opinion, that the big counties do, but we do it with less resources, and that’s where I need your help. And so my referee, Tom Pulley, is going to pass out a little bullet point, because I’m going to try to get right to the point for you so that you know why we think our request is worthy of a magistrate here today. Many of you probably recognize me. It’s not the first time I’ve been here. I think this is my third request before the body and the handout that you’re getting will kind of give you just my bullet points and some things I want you to be thinking about and some things to take with you. The weighted caseload study is an excellent tool, but it is not infallible. I want you to look at paragraph one. If you look at the picture, people are going to come before you today and they’re going to ask for resources. And I know your resources are limited. I deal with that every day in a small county. What I want you to do is think about the big picture. Who are the counties who really need the resources? And if you look at our need, 2016, we were third in the state in need. 2017, we were fourth in the state in need. 2018, we were third in the state in need. 2019, we were second in the state in need. 2020, we were third in the state in need. 2021, 9th. And then a strange thing happened in 2022 and 2023. It looks like we don’t have any need all of a sudden. And you know why that is? Because I reached out to our judiciary and I reached out to some of you, and I did what you told me to do. We shared for seven years with Perry county. They came over one day a week, and their magistrate came over, and we did it. Now Perry county has been reassigned to Dubois. Who needs them worse than I do? And we are in an underserved district from my point of view. I also, once we knew that the Perry county magistrate was going to be going, I had to have some help to keep the court and all of our programs running. So I went to our council, and we got a part time referee, and that’s Judge Pulley, who’s here. The interesting thing is, if you take a close look at these weighted caseload studies, look at what they say I’ve got in. Spencer county for this year, 2.23 judicial officers. Okay, first of all, it’s incorrect because it looks like, and I haven’t got a chance to talk to you about that yet, but it looks like they double counted. The Perry county magistrate counted her twice. Because when I turn in my weighted caseload, and I don’t want to bog you down with details, I put down how many days temporary judges came. But then there’s also another section that has assigned judges, and it looks like it was double counted. But that really has no bearing on what I’m asking for, because even if you take that out, if you count referee Pulley, who was there at that time for four days a week, we were still close to having two people there, two judges. Even though I’m the only elected judge, the only state paid judge, referee Pulley was paid with a, I call it the Band aid approach. We went through the courts, we got a grant. We went through probation, had him to do some probation and juvenile matters, use probation user fees. We went through our county general, got a little bit from the county, kicked in. So we tried to do everything we could to use the limited resources that we have to make sure that we had the proper staffing for our judiciary. And then when you look at the highlights here, we are the largest county by population and by geography. By the way, we’re a very large county that only has one state paid judicial officer. There are six counties that have, that are smaller than us that have more than one state paid judicial officer. It’s really interesting when you look at the other entities that I have to work with are other column justice partners. The prosecutor’s office has three full time prosecutors. Two are full time state paid. The child support division, well, I should say the 4D office, the DC’s attorneys for Chins and neglect cases have two full time state paid officers to full time state paid attorneys. So what? It doesn’t take much understanding to understand that whenever you have two DCs attorneys sending cases to the court, you have three prosecutors sending cases to the court. Two of them are state paid on each end. And we only have one state paid judge. We’re keeping pretty busy. And so I am here today asking once again for assistance. Our case is a little bit different in that you might think, well, Spencer county, you only got about 20,000 people, even though you’re the largest county with only one judge instead of two. Can’t you get by? Well, the thing that I think is really very distinct for us is in that paragraph five there. Our census data doesn’t really cover what we have with holiday World and splashin safari. It brings in a million people every year into our county. That’s a lot of issues legally that it brings with it. It’s a blessing for our community. Over 2000 seasonal workers come in that are not counted in the census and work in our community. At Holiday World and Splashin Safari, we also have all the Abraham Lincoln boyhood home, the national Memorial State park, the amphitheater and the Pioneer village. Brings in a lot of tourists for our particular community. So you can imagine being in a small county where over a million people are coming in each year. We also have an interstate running through the county and that’s the east west corridor for 64. We also have the four lane highway 231 going north south and that’s the 69 corridor. We have two bridges directly to Kentucky in our county. Our whole river bottom area is a crime issue because the people from, not all from Kentucky, but mostly from Kentucky come and they have parties down the river bottoms. We had a shooting there just a few weeks ago. All those kind of things contribute, but we have a lot of traffic through our community. So we are asking to convert the currently existing referee position to a magistrate position. And as I said, we had seven years where we shared with Perry County a magistrate. My question is what other courts have to do that? I mean, we’ve tried to put in the work and we’ve tried to save resources and then we have had three years where we paid for with, I call it the band aid approach, a part time referee. And this year so far, we don’t have the full. Time funding for Judge Pulley, we’ve got part of it. And I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ll do. Our resources are limited. So we really do need your help. We do not have a senior judge that lives in our county. So when we do use a senior judge, they’ve got to come from counties away. And it’s difficult. Sometimes it’s hard to get there from here. You know what I mean? And so it’s just some things that I wanted you to consider. So we wanted to leave you with that bullet point. And I’ll just kind of finish with a quick, fun story. I get to come to work every day in an old historic courthouse. And it’s wonderful. And you know what’s really cool? When I look out my window in my chambers, I get to see the house I grew up in. Not many people get to do that. It’s an awesome job. It’s an awesome responsibility. But like other counties, we sure could use some help. And what I want you to think about today is I’m not asking for anything extra in my opinion. I’m asking for the base level of judicial officers. Two, one, me. I’m already here. Two, a referee Pulley, who would become the magistrate of our court. So with that, I just thank you for your attention. I know you have a tough job to do. I know the resources are limited. I appreciate the ability to speak to you today, and I’ll be glad to answer any questions. Thank you. Judge Dart. Senator Brown, do you have a question? Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you. And I want to keep this brief because I know we have another court and we have another issue to address today, and we’re getting close on time. But. So I just want to be clear. You. Your county is not fully funding your referee right now. That is. Right. Judge Foley right here. Well, they did for this year, but we just went through the budget time and they only approved half of the full time position. And they. They basically told me, we’re going to wait and see what happens. Okay. And I don’t know whether that means they will, they won’t or whether they’re going to, but the numbers that we have before us, which actually suggests that you don’t need another court, are based on the fact that they are presupposing that the referee you have is full time. That’s correct. Okay. I would say, if I could just kind of clarify what. Can I just finish? I just want to say, though, it is not helpful when, when. When I am hearing that these numbers are wrong when they are skewed against you and how the numbers need to be supported in your favor, because there are. Let me do the math. There are 87 counties today are not coming before us, and I’m pretty sure if the numbers are against them, they’re not going to say, please take a judge away. So I appreciate the dilemma you’re in, having a referee, and it’s being presented as a full time judge, therefore, you don’t have the need, you would not be here before. So I appreciate that clarification. That’s helpful. I will just have to tell you, I mean, I could say this. I appreciate the you trying to make us understand the impact, but I’m just going to be quite blunt here with Spencer county. If you didn’t have this, this information you gave us, I could do this with Allen county. We have interstates going through a county. We have tourist attractions. We have people coming in. I’m sure I don’t want to speak for Senator Taylor is not here anymore, but I’m sure he could do a formula and add courts in Marion county because of the Colts games and Pacers games and the fever games, et cetera, and the interstate running through. So this is not helpful unless you’re suggesting we change the entire weighted caseload system, which we’re not doing today. But what is helpful, I just want to make sure you understand is that clarifying that the numbers that they are proposing here actually presuppose the referee is a full time magistrate or judge, which was not made clear. So thank you for that. Yeah. And just one quick comment on your question. I don’t begrudge the other counties. I’m just asking for the base level of judicial officers. That’s it. So. Understood. Thank you, sir. Any other questions? Okay, thank you very much. Hey, thank you. And last but certainly not least, is Vigo county. If they have a representative here, do they? I don’t. Didn’t see. Oh, yeah. There we go. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Chris Newton. I’m the judge of the vigo superior Court, division four. I have with me magistrate Dan Kelly. He’s our juvenile magistrate. I have Marie Bazil thiess, who’s a representative of our Vigo county council. I also have our state senator Gray. Good, who’s with us here today. I just want to start off and say I love my job. It’s a great job. I love my county. I love my community. I love my state. And you know, the only way I think I would quit this job is. If it were for health reasons, if for some reason the voters got sick of me, I think I’d have to leave. But I. I love it, and I intend to stay a lot longer, if that’s possible. We were here a couple of years ago, and we were requesting a new judge at that time, and we felt that with the utility that it showed that we were either second or third in the state. And we have changed our request because we think that a magistrate better suits our needs. This magistrate would be used largely in juvenile matters, even though we do have a juvenile magistrate. This is one of the things that’s pushing this, but we want it to be of a general jurisdiction so that we could use them perhaps also with our jail, to help with our jail issues, too. We wish we had Hamilton County’s problem. Our population has been somewhat stagnant. Now we think things are going to change, that things are going to get better with our population. But one of our problems is just poverty. There’s also some mental health and addiction issues. We tried to address those as a judiciary. We have several certified courts. We have a family recovery court, veterans court, an adult drug court, a juvenile drug court that are all certified, thanks to Representative Stuart Wald. We’re working right now to have the adult mental health court become certified, and we’re going through that training right now. And Judge Reddy has a commercial court that I’m sure she’s working on that, becoming certified also. So we tried to take a lot of steps to help alleviate some of the repeat customers, you might say, in our system. What is moving this a lot is, are the issues, the chins issues, which are children in need of services. Maybe Judge Magistrate Kelly could address that for us here. Hello. Thank you very much for having us here. My name is Dan Kelly. I’ve been the juvenile magistrate in Vigo county for 14 years. And I just wanted to tell you, because I know you’ve got our statistics, the weighted caseload numbers and all that, but I just wanted to tell you sort of briefly the real world impact that this has with the numbers we have. My first year was 2010, and we had just over 100 chn’s cases filed that year, plus the ones that had carried over from the previous year. This year, we’re on track to have over 500. Most of those are removals from the home, which require detention hearings to be held within 48 hours of the removal occurring. So we also handle all of the. We handle the termination of parental rights cases, the paternity cases for the county, and the juvenile delinquency docket. And so the Supreme Court has given courts a directive. If you have an issue dealing with children, those should be expedited and we take that very seriously. We do what we can to accommodate that. And of course, the Chen’s cases have statutory deadlines. You know, they’re entitled, the parents are entitled to fact finding hearing within 60 days so they don’t have to wait to prove that, you know, that they are taking fine care of their kids. And that makes sense. But what happens then is we fill our docket to accommodate this large volume of cases. And so if somebody comes in and they say they’re not getting to see their child that was born out of wedlock on the paternity docket, instead of seeing, getting that case scheduled within a reasonable time, they may have to wait eight months for a 15 minutes hearing. And then if the other party wants to hire an attorney, I’m faced. And so they want to continue that case, I’m faced with, well, do I make sure I’m protecting that parent’s due process rights by granting the continuance or do I insure the rights of the party that’s already been waiting this long to get into court? So there are a lot of dilemmas caused by this. We have not increased our staff with this increase in caseload. We have these extra problem solving courts that we also take our time with which we think are very effective. But I have, I think, taken just to let you know, some of these numbers, I don’t know where they’re coming from. I think I’ve taken six, six days. Six days in the 14 years I’ve been there, been blessed with good health so far. And, you know, hope that continues. But we always do work from, if you don’t know what we’re talking about with the queues, we sign our orders, they’re all electronic. And so we have orders that we have to look over or motions and things like that. We have to go into there on the computer and do our work in that nature instead of signing paper copies in our queue. So that’s why we’re able to do work, as they’ve said, on vacation. And I think all of us do that, all the judges and magistrates that I know but judge our two. Docket we might have on our, which is our main chin child need of services day. We might have an average of about 40 cases scheduled, and we just bring in one family group after another. It might be a case with, you know, one mom and three dads. And I have to wrap my head around what’s going on in that situation and make a decision about whether to return the child home or not. And then the next family comes in and I have to get that fact situation. We’re often there till 06:00 p.m. maybe a ten minute lunch break. Judge Sarah Mullikin, who oversees the juvenile court, she has taken on the responsibility of assisting with our periodic and permanency hearings on our child need of services cases just because there’s no time in our docket. And she’s often there till six or 08:00 every Thursday when she handles those. And it’s just become, you know, like these other judges. I love my job and I’m going to do this whether you support this or not. But I think for us to do justice to our constituents, we have to be able to accommodate them. We have to be able to get them hearing scheduled, and there’s just not time to do that. The county is also paying now in Vigo county for somebody to come and mediate cases on these child needed services and termination cases. And he comes over twice a month and that kind of helps our doc a little bit. If it weren’t for that, there’d be no way we could even be within, in compliance with scheduling or the cases that have to be heard. If you have any specific questions, let me know. I know you’ve had a long day of hearing. Can I ask real quick peers, from your submission, do you have an extraordinarily large number of chin cases? More so than other counties. So do you know why that is? I think it’s because of our poverty. We have terrible addiction problems. That’s why we have the veterans court, the family recovery court, the juvenile drug court, and the regular adult drug court. We just have a, and mental health is obviously tied in with that, so we do. I think, sir, I think that’s correct. Any other questions? Come on up. Yes, come on up, ma’am. Hi, I’m here and I think I was asked to speak today to all of you as a county council representative and how it affects our communities council, but also probably similar to other counties. My name is Marie Belzill thieves. I’m a Vigo county council at large member in our community, and I also serve as pro tem, I’m just going to reiterate a little bit. Again, I first of all, cannot say enough about our judges. We are blessed with some very dedicated judges who go above and beyond, not just advocating for their profession, but for the people of our community who are in very, very high need. I’m not sure how well you know our county, but it is a unique place with a lot of potential and many challenges. I have seen this as an official, but also as a public school educator and counselor for nearly 30 years. I have spent entire days in our courts learning about how our judges and staff work, but also to see the types of cases we are seeing. I see daily how our families and children are impacted by issues and needs in our county. As an educator and county official, sorry, I apologize. I’m fighting something. In Vigo county, we have one of the highest poverty rates for families at one point in time. In recent years, we had the highest child poverty rate in the state. With that, we have one of the highest chins as you’re hearing cases in the state, a new jail that we have supported that is already overcrowded, growing addiction and substance abuse issues, and we are currently in continuance with a federal lawsuit about that jail that we have supported, and also a growing homeless population for adults and children. We have a lot of high needs with a lower tax base because of our poverty issues. Many of our needs end up in our justice system or courts one way or another. Vigo county council and our judges or leaders have worked to be proactive in creating being creative to prevent recidivism through many of our problem solving courts. We have added and supported prosecutors and public defenders, along with social workers to support our courts and citizens. We have committed to adding additional causes as well. In the past, we have committed fiscally to support those decisions and jobs, including supporting some of the things that you heard today that maybe other counties don’t have the ability to do. We have committed a large portion of our funds in Vigo county to do that. Peer recovery programs have grown as well. I believe we are trying to be as creative, but also proactive and ethical in supporting the people of. Of our community. We have done this with finances from our state and local board of health funding to get creative and helping those needs. These courts take all hands in and have found some success. But we are pleading for your assistance and support. We are a county in desperate need of support to help our courts, but more importantly, the people of our county and fellow Hoosiers, we have done what we can with budgets and staff. We are here to request a magistrate to get people processed as necessary and help them get the assistance they need faster. As a county council, we have submitted a letter saying we financially support employee benefits and a staff for that new position. I am confident we are not alone in the needs, but I ask that you listen to and work with our communities and our judges to support this process at all levels of government. Please take a very close look at Vigo county. We have been here before and we have some really extreme needs that I cannot stress enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from the committee members? Yes, senator. Go ahead. Thank you. Mister Chair. Quick question. You go from the 100. What year was that? You had the 100? 2010, sir. And then you’ve got five, over 500. Now, what do you attribute that to? Poverty and meth addiction. Most of the cases that come to us in the child needed services cases in Vigo county start out because of meth addiction. But what might bring the family to our attention might be a domestic violence thing. Police might be called in the middle of the night and there’s a fight between parents. And DC’s is called because the parents are hauled off to jail and there are three or four kids in the family and nobody to take care of them. And then the parents test positive for methamphetamine. And a lot of times then it’s compounded because they’ll go ask if there’s a grandparent that can watch them. And we have trouble finding a grandparent who can screen clean. And so it’s really an addiction issue, I think, primarily. Has there been a study done local wives with Terre Haute concerning the breakdown? I’m not aware of that, Senator Randolph, but I do wonder about that. I’ve seen growing up in Terre Haute, a change in my lifetime, and I didn’t. I think that this drug problem is just really, really bad in Vigo County. I know it’s bad everywhere, but the methamphetamine, which afflicts Terre Haute particularly Vigo county, is just really a scourge because it just, I think more than a lot of the other drugs really just is destructive and the parents can’t function. They can’t get their kids to school. So a lot of times the reports are made from schools because kids are home and not getting to school. I do think that’s it. But as far as what to do about that, I agree there needs to be some solution because we’re like, you know, the courts are like a band aid in a sense, but we got to figure out a way to. I agree with you, to deal with the underlying problem because it’s not getting better population wise. Has it been an increase? We’re pretty stagnant. Okay. Same in 2010? Yes, sir. I don’t think there’s been a drastic change in population. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, sir. We will see some growth, though. I believe in the next year. We have two fairly large businesses. We are trying to be optimistic about some of that growth, but at the same time, the needs with what our county tax base is very, very troublesome. I do want to point out what Senator Taylor had mentioned earlier about policy issues. One of the things that I’ve seen on the council, and I know this is separate, but I do think you have to keep this in mind, is over the years we have been asked to pick up more and more as a county council because either state funding has been cut or federal funding for things like our CASA programs. We cannot let our CASA representatives, paid or volunteers continue to have more and more cases put on them without supporting that program. And we are picking up the tab on that. While our community would love to be proactive on quality of life and other kinds of things, infrastructure and all that, we are seeing our needs and a large portion of our budget go to this. And we have done our due diligence to support these programs in extra ways that I don’t know that other communities have. I think I saw Representative Garcia Wilburn down there. Thank you, chairman. I know that Vigo county will be home to one of the proposed certified community behavioral health centers, but do you currently have a certified mental health center? We do. I cannot even tell you, though, coming from my former counselor background, are any of our agencies offering, whether it be drug addiction, mental health support? They’re exploding right now. It’s taken a really hard time to get in there. I know our judges. You talk about phone calls and working 24 hours. I follow our sheriff’s deputies along on shifts and they’re doing emergency detentions throughout their shift because those are people in needs and those have to go through our courts and we cannot. I mean, we obviously have to see them in our mental health centers, but some of the situations are intense. We’ve been creative in creating peer recovery coaches, all kinds of things. But again, and we are supporting that financially, and we’re just asking for help from the state on this and we’re picking up the staff to help it as well. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. That concludes our presentations from the courts. Appreciate the committee’s great questions. As I mentioned at the beginning, we’re not going to take any action on these, but I would ask that the committee members read through the materials, look at your notes, consider the testimony you heard, and we will be discussing and voting when we come back for the next meeting on October 3. So, that being said, we have a little bit of time left. I’m trying my best to get us as close to noon as we can. We do have some homeowners association topics that we were asked to view. If you’re not here for those, you can feel free. If you need to slide out, go ahead and do so. Those topics were included in the alleged council resolution. And I know we have, I think, just a couple people signed up to testify. Mister Arnold, is he here? He’s the new name I have. Okay. Come on up here, sir. Come on up here. Do your best. Okay. And try to hold my time limit. Five minute time limit. Okay. Because we’re getting close to the end. Yeah, I’ll try to read this and get it through in five minutes. And I’d like to introduce my friend, Callie Seifel. And Callie is here to help me today. And we have an exhibit for everybody that we’re going to pass out. So thank you, Callie. First of all, I would like to introduce myself. I’m John Arnold and I am a CPA. And I am a 35 year veteran employee with the state and the Department of Child Services. But more importantly for this group, I have been an HOA board member since April 1998. In our HOA, we do not have a management company. So being a board member also means being a manager and doing lots and lots of work. I have been the CFO of our Hoa gentry estates homeowners the entire time that I have been on the board. I have also served as president from October 2002 until just recently. This was after we rewrote the bylaws to allow board members to hold more than one office in our HOA. We revised the bylaws as needed and not after a pre determined time period. We know that in our HoA we have superior customer service and go way beyond the normal duties of HOA leaders, from interviewing successfully when phone service was disrupted when a contractor cut a major cable, to filing a complaint with the utility Regulatory Commission when a gas line was cut in our subdivision, we do it all with the gas line contractor. The gas line contractor was fined 3000 and his management staff was ordered to get more training. For those watching on livestream, I would like to mention that I received in advance of this meeting about a dozen questions to answer relating to HOA issues. I did send in answers. I would like to thank my cousin, Carol Wagers of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a retired teacher and counselor, for helping me write some of those answers. I would also like to thank Dennis and Patricia Fraser, who are here today for helping me with proofing so that everything was said correctly. I would also like to. One thing that has been really disappointing to me is that we have not really had the opportunity to share our great story with anyone. So I’m very much appreciative of getting to come here today. Thank you so much, Chris, for letting me come. Thank you. I’m sorry. Keep going. Mister Honor, I didn’t know if you were done. Now these envelopes that Callie has passed out. One thing, that one thing that I was advised of is that by my state senator, Shelley Oeder, was that there was some people had some questions about the ballots that were issued by hoas. And we think we do a very superior job of that. And so what. And I am a very experienced investor in stocks and so I get all these proxies from companies. And so I decided the best way to deal with getting the ballots out to everybody was to style it like a corporate proxy. And so everyone in our neighborhood, all the property owners there, mailed a. Ballot, and along with an envelope to send the ballot back in after it’s marked, and along with instructions as to how to complete the ballot. And so that’s the way we do. We’re very big on making sure that everybody is included, because we don’t want to just post a notice on a fence that said there’s an annual meeting or send an email. We want to make sure everybody is included. And so that’s our. And so we decided that the best way to illustrate the point of that is to just make everyone an individual ballot, just like you would get if you were a resident of gentry Estates. And it was easy to find out who all of you people are. So I just decided, we’re going to make the individual ballot and pass it out at this meeting. And so that’s our story. We try to really look out for the residents. And I do wish to thank Shelly Oda for telling me about this meeting, because otherwise I would not have known anything about it. An issue came up in the closing of my new house, which I was concerned about. And I didn’t think it was done quite right. And I talked to Shelley about that. And if it hadn’t been for that happening, I wouldn’t have been talking to Shelly recently. And when I was talking to Shelly about the issue where I think it wasn’t done right, she said, there’s this meeting of the HOA. There’s this HOA study committee, and you need to be there because of all your experience. So that’s why I’m here, is because Shelly encouraged me to come. And thank you so much for having me come. Is there anyone have any questions? Thank you, Mister Arnold. Any questions for Mister Arnold? I don’t see any, sir, thank you so much for coming. Really appreciate it. Oh, you’re welcome. I don’t have anybody else sign up to testify. If there is anybody. Can you step up? Come on up. Come on up. Just announce yourself. And if you wouldn’t mind, there’s a piece of paper on the podium there, if you can fill it out after you’re done and just hand it up here. And if there’s anybody else here to testify on this topic, please just wave to me. Let us know. Okay, we’ll come next. Sorry we didn’t get everybody. Go ahead. Thank you. Chairman Jeter, members of the committee, I’m Carly Hopper with Indiana Builders association. We represent more than 2700 builders, developers, remodelers, and their trade partners in the state of Indiana. We appreciate the opportunity to share comments with you about our members interest in hoas as new subdivisions are built and include amenities like playgrounds, trails, pools, pickleball courts are the latest thing. There’s a need to plan for the maintenance of those amenities as well as the common areas in the subdivisions. So the builders and developers establish an Hoa with covenants, conditions and restrictions and set the dues to provide for those shared amenities. Homebuyers are made aware of the CCRs and the dues before purchasing the home, and builders and developers typically oversee the Hoa until the last lot is sold and then it transfers to the homeowners. So the current state statute provides sufficient clarity on budgets, meetings and dues. So we aren’t advocating for any changes at this time. I’d be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Miss Hopper. Any questions? Senator Taylor, Senator Freeman, whoever wants to go first, go ahead. You both go. Thank you to my other good friend from Indianapolis. Thank you, Mister chairman. I was adamant about having this as a study committee. I thought it was going to be more robust. But here’s my issue, and I can tell you that this is an issue that hopefully somebody from the, I understand there’s somebody from the homeowners association group here. It’s not the current statute that concerns me. It’s the activity of some of the hoas across the state. And here’s an example. Homeowners associations have the ability to attach liens to property. They also have the ability to release liens from property. What I am seeing in my district and dealt with this is homeowners associations, especially in Indianapolis, are based basically like condo owners. They have common areas and the condo owners, so they, you know, someone owes homeowners association dues, right. The homeowners association sells it to somebody based on, hey, we’ve got these liens. If you pay these liens, you can be the owner of this condo. Problem is they don’t really own it. It’s subject to a lien and other incumbents, which is most likely a mortgage. And the homeowners association walks away, says, hey, we sold our interest, but, you know, bank, you deal with it. You know, you got this person. This person really sincerely believes. Because they don’t do a title search. Most people aren’t, you know, a $15,000 transaction. You’re not going to go through a title search to see if there’s some other liens on it, you know, so I’m trying to figure out what the authority. What authority we’ve given Hoas to actually attach liens, where it came from. Is there a limit? Can they assess fees? You’re saying everything’s okay. Saying everything is okay. On the front end, where the builder developer still retains control once he turns it over, he or she turns it over to the owners. Again, their interest. At that point, they don’t have an interest. Okay, so you guys are on interest. I heard you say that once the last lot is sold, you guys are out of it. Correct. All right, well. All right, well, just keep building your house. There may be existing contracts with property management companies, all right, that last for a year or two longer, but outside of that, no. Well, we do. I think we need to have a robust understanding in a study of our homeowners associations and what the rights that they have. And, I mean, I just see it all the time, and I can’t speak for all of them. Cause I know there’s some good ones out there, but I. You know, when I think the state statute specific to the liens attaching for nonpayment of dues, but not outside of that and the couple of incidents. But there’s fines, too. There are. And they get to charge. Yes. And they get to charge interest on those fines, similarly to how a city would charge you if you don’t mow your grass and they come out to do it. A homeowners association is not a city. Correct. That’s the problem. Okay. It’s not a government entity. It isn’t. But they are private contracts that folks agree to sign when they join the neighborhood. Buy a home in a neighborhood that’s controlled by an HOA. They sign a Hoa contract, or do they sign a. They’re given something that says that the neighborhood they’re moving into is overseen by an HOA. And it doesn’t matter. I just want to make sure, because I’ve never heard. Maybe that’s what we need to do. Maybe there needs to be a document that says you’re coming to this community and you’re automatically, you know, a separate. I think it. That document exists. Isn’t that in the closing, closing documents? It is. Tell you what the dues are and everything? Yes. Those are all disclosed. Even when the house is listed. Oh, really? Yes. Okay, well, see, I’m learning something already. All right, thank you. Thank you, Representative. All right. And it tells you what, the amount you’re going to pay right now. But homeowners associations can increase that, too, right? Yeah. All right. They’re not based on a budget or anything. They present a budget annually? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you, Senator Freeman. Thank you, Carly. I’d love to see you. I saw you earlier. Do you want me to come around the pillar? I was taking up the Greg Sterwald. I thought the pillar was a good thing until now. Is there a standard rate sheet of what hoas charge an individual homeowner for certain things? Let’s say, for example, let’s say a homeowner’s moving out of the neighborhood and moving to a different house, and you got to prove that you’re current on your dues. Like, is there a standard rate sheet of what we charge citizens for those kinds of functions? Not that I’m aware of. If you do it, title companies provide essentially an Excel spreadsheet that shows hoas, and some of them are linked to websites that you can go to that spell out what dues are. Again, a lot of those, the contracts that are set up with the property management companies to provide the mowing or to clean the pool aren’t publicly disclosed, as far as I know, but the homeowners get those estimates or know where the money’s going, essentially. Well, here, look. Here’s when Hoas lost me in 2017, I moved, and I moved out of my house and was told that I had to provide proof that I was current on my HOA dues. So I’m nuts. And took a copy of the Hoa dues and a copy of my cleared check and said, well, here you go. I’m current on my dues. And they said, no, that doesn’t work. You got to get a statement from your HoA company, management company. And I said, okay, fine. So I called them, and they wanted $300 of my money. Carly, let me just suggest to you that I am a gentleman, that, thank God, has earned a great living in my life and could produce $300 very quickly without effort. I would not pay $300 for that piece of paper. If my maker appeared in front of me and told me to do it, there is no chance that I would do it. None. And I don’t think a normal citizen walking in Indiana or any other state for this matter should have to, because, my God, if my hourly rate as a lawyer gets questioned, I want to. Know how it takes two minutes to produce a piece of paper from some clerk in some office to charge $300? So, hoas, look, there needs to be some revision here. Just put me on record with Senator Taylor that there needs to be some. Look at these quasi governmental institutions and the amount of money that they’re charging citizens that we represent, that I hear from all the time. Other comments? Questions? Thank you. Thanks. Ma’am, can you step on up? I’m sorry, we didn’t get your sign up either. Just announce yourself. Good morning, committee, and thank you for having us. My name is Kelly Elmore. I am an attorney, a principal at the law firm of Covid’s Shifrin Nesbitt. We represent thousands of community associations, homeowner associations, condo townhome associations. I’m here today as the chair of the Legislative Action Committee for CAI, the community association’s institute, which is a national organization comprised of homeowners, board members, attorneys, and other providers. And I am joined today by several of our committee members, including Tom Murray of the law firm of EADs Murray and Pugh. We prepared and submitted a position statement on the issues that I know that were presented as the study topics. So I would encourage everyone to read. We’ve laid it out as bullet points on each of those issues. I think some of the issues raised, though, this morning are a little bit different than the original topic issues, and I can speak to those. But primarily, I did want to speak to one issue that is very important to our membership, and that is this issue of enforcement within associations. And the great news is we just heard 2 hours from judicial officers pleading with this committee to reduce the caseload that is in front of the judiciary, and we have a proposed solution to reduce those cases. We need to work on legislation. Fortunately, our committee has prepared draft legislation that will do that by empowering and expanding the ability of an association in a responsible, reasonable manner with restrictions to actually enforce the governing documents. And for those associations who do not have that enforcement mechanism in their documents already, our legislation proposes that they also be allowed to do this. While we don’t always find compelling what other states are doing, our research has shown 37 other states already have this legislation in place. I can tell you our firm represents thousands of associations and other states. It works. We can do it with restrictions and a reasonable proposed legislation that allows community associations, when there are violations or other issues in communities, to assess a penalty. As noted already by some members speaking this morning, we do anticipate the number of community associations and homeowner associations is going to rise. We are seeing a boom in development. It would be very helpful. And as Senator Freeman has raised some very good issues that we can also address in our legislation. Now is the time to be proactive, to work on legislation where we can address things like caps on fees for paid assessment letters. That’s already happening in other states. We can do that here. We can do it reasonably and still give flexibility to the associations. We do have a draft that we would like to submit after this hearing for consideration by this committee. And as I mentioned, we did lay out in our position statement the key points as to each of these items. And Senator Taylor, with respect to the lien issue, what you just described as a fairly rare situation, there are some nuances. I don’t know if that was articulated, exactly how that happens, as far as when an association has a lien and a potential sale. And we’d love to talk with you about that and clarify that process. But I did want to just mention today, over 95% of owners and community associations comply with the governing documents. They want to just live in their community. They want to pay the minimum amount of assessments and simply go about their way of life, and they are complying with the governing documents. When we talk about sort of the bad actors and associations or people causing issues, it is less than 5% of the owners. What we are proposing to do is try to empower these associations that we need to continue to develop in Indiana. We want to empower them to be able to resolve these disputes effectively within their communities so they are not clogging the courts. Judge block does not want to see our cases. None of these judges want to see them. We can get them out of the court system. To give you one final example, I just. Tried a case last year in Johnson county in front of Judge Barton, we sent over 20 notices to an owner about continued violations. The association had no other mechanism other than to file suit. This particular violation was an rv and a driveway that the owner claimed was a prayer temple. It was not, so we were forced to go to court. The fees on that, because of all of the exhibits and antics that were going on, was over $6,000, which Judge Barton awarded. We can cut down on legal fees for homeowner associations, and we can cut down on clogging the court system if we can just take a reasonable approach and consider legislation. I agree with Senator Freeman’s statement. It is time that we revise our homeowner association act and we have solutions. I’m open to any questions. Thank you for the testimony. Any questions? Yes, Senator Taylor and then Senator Paul after that. Thank you. Can you clarify where my scenario was inaccurate? So the association has the ability, after an owner fails to pay assessments, you can either generally pursue a collection action or file a lien. Under the law, typically what happens is you file the lien, you wait 90 days before you can do anything. Notice is sent to the owner. The owner receives a copy of the recorded lien. So they have 90 days to address the situation. Then typically, if the association does need to pursue it and collect the balance, then a notice is sent. They still have another 30 days to comply. Then if they still don’t pay or resolve the issue, then you would have to file a foreclosure action. They get notice and an opportunity to come to the court and resolve it. If they still don’t pay, then typically you’re filing a motion for default. So there are tons of notices that are sent along the way. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Let me clarify. Maybe I didn’t clarify. They went through the right process. I’m talking about the person who bought the property based on the fact that they knew that there were liens and they had a default judgment, and the homeowners association, because they had a default judgment, sold the property to a third party. Sure. You’re telling me that doesn’t happen? It’s very rare. And what typically happens is if the association sells property for a lien. Let’s suppose the association’s lien is $2,500, right? If the property sells and there’s a surplus, after any mortgage company is paid, the association receives its balance, and then typically the owner would receive the surplus. So there can be some nuances, but that is a fairly rare situation. And quite honestly, usually what happens is the bank who holds a mortgage on a home usually comes in, and they’re usually the ones selling anyway. Okay. All right. So let me ask you questions about the fees, and I don’t think. This is not. This is not your presentation. Right. This is John Arnold. I think he was before. That is. I think that was the develop. Oh. John Arnold is not affiliated with our organization. No, no, no, no. I don’t need to cut. I just wanted to make sure. I wanted to ask a question. Are you. Are your homeowners association members able to, like, when they. When they file a lien? Right. You’d usually file the lien for them. Right. You can file it for fees. You can file it for violations. Who comes up with the rules about how, you know how much you can charge? So let me give you an example. One of the things that I find very particular and particularly bad is that a homeowners association can say, hey, I don’t want you to have an rv in your driveway. Okay? Now I’m paying my mortgage. But you can’t have your rv sitting in your driveway. Right. If it’s in their recorded documents. No, this is the homeowners association rules. No, no, no. Generally, you cannot restrict by rule something that’s not provided for in a declaration. And in a homeowners association. Okay. You would need a super majority. Okay. But that’s okay. You’ve got the declaration. Mm hmm. Help me understand that. It’s on my property. It’s in my driveway. I own it. The house. I’m paying the mortgage. Help me understand. How about this one? You can’t leave your trash can on the side of your house. You gotta put it in the back. Can they assess a fee on me for that? If the governing documents state that that is a. Restriction. And remember, as this woman indicated, when a developer sets up a community and they go through the process and they create the restrictions, it is a publicly recorded document, which means any owner buying into that community says, yes, I agree. It’s like joining a club. Respectfully, even when I sign the mortgage, I don’t read every document. Okay. And if anybody in this room. If anybody in this room. No, I’m being, I mean, actually, let’s be realistic here. When people go to buy a home, no. Okay, so we’re going to give a non government entity the ability to file a document where they file it at. They gonna file it at the, with the recorder of deeds for that count. Okay, recorder of deeds. And then what I’m supposed to do when I see, notice that there’s a homeowners association, before I sign my mortgage, I’m supposed to go to the recorder of deeds and say, you know what, you charge $25 for every day that my trash can is sitting at the end of my driveway instead of on the side of the house where there’s nothing else. Or you could charge me $100 because my grass is three inches tall. Right. And I’m supposed to know that. So it’s okay. I think that’s what you’re saying. I’m supposed to go to recorder deeds and. No, typically what happens is if you’re buying from a developer, the developer always provides that packet. Is it required by law? Yes. To provide the fees, the dollar that you’re going to be charged for those? Not with respect to any penalties. Each association can set those. And that’s also part of our proposed legislation is that we’re advocating that each association adopt a schedule of fees. Because you can imagine a fine for something, you know, in Geist might be different than something in southern Indiana. That’s my point. There’s no requirement in the law that the fees be disclosed. It says there are fees, but it doesn’t tell me my fees. And let’s be real, homeowners associations can have a meeting and they could change the fees. Right? A board of directors that’s elected could change the fees. But I would say that under the law, there is an obligation for the association to provide it, because under the current HOA act, anybody who requests copies of the association corporate records, they’re required to produce them. And that happens. Paul request? Yes, correct. All right, Senator Paul, I was gonna call in next, sorry. And then I’ll come right over here. Thank you, mister chair. So I just had a question as far as these fees and fines goes. And this is, to Senator Taylor’s point, the fines, I guess the violations that you’re assessing these fines for, are they all also considered ordinance violations of the municipalities in which these hoas are located within or the counties that they’re located in? It entirely depends. So, for example, you might see an overlap where an association might say, you can’t have cars parked on the street overnight, and separately, it might be a city ordinance, which you raise a good point because we just did a large presentation for the city officials last week, and what the residents are saying is they’re so frustrated with the lack of ability to enforce their governing documents, they’re now going to the city and asking the city to step up the enforcement. So again, now we’re going to be leaning back more on city resources when we can take care of this issue in the HOa itself. So if there are, I guess, if there’s extra jurisdictional issues. So, for example, you have violations that are not ordinance violations, also ordinance violations. So, you know, for example, Senator Taylor brought up the idea that you couldn’t have your garbage cans on the side of your house. You had to put them in the back. That likely is not an ordinance violation. That’s likely going to be the aesthetic of the Hoa in which these individuals, you know, by the house, they would have to go to the recorder, the recorder’s office, to find the Hoa documents before they. Before they purchase the home. Correct. In order to find out whether or not that’s a violation. Well, I believe right now, under the current law, the seller is required to provide them to a purchaser. So when you go to purchase a home in an hoa, you should be provided with a statement on behalf of the association, anything that’s owed, as well as a copy of the governing documents. And I believe most real estate agents are aware of this and they routinely do do that. Okay. I mean, so that’s obviously, that’s a notice issue as to whether or not that happens. And I’m sure that there’s a completely separate legal, you know, remedy for individuals that may have bought into a house, you know, into an hoa that they didn’t know about. But I guess my question goes to, you can still charge for a. Violation under these HOA regulations, even if they’re not considered. Even if they’re not considered ordinance violations within the municipality. So they go above and beyond. So, yeah, it’s a breach of contract, essentially. Okay. That’s. I just. I’ve never lived in an Hoa area. I’ve never bought a house there, so I didn’t know whether or not that was it. So. Thank you. I think I saw Senator Alexander and then represent Bauer after that. Yeah. Thank you, mister chairman. Could you just explain the difference, just for the group up here and also the public, between a HOA and a neighborhood association? So generally with a homeowner’s association, you have a declaration that specifically sets forth any covenants, restrictions, easements, and generally defines the property, what is common area, what is nothing, who’s responsible for which portions of the property versus a neighborhood association, which is more of, I think, a municipal setup type association of general constituents. So I don’t believe neighborhood associations have similar restrictions. It’s not a formal organization set up. And all homeowner associations are set up as not for profit corporations generally. Yeah, I guess the other difference I was getting at is a neighborhood association can assess an amount that somebody would pay to belong to the neighborhood association. But generally that’s voluntary. It’s not. If you pay it, that’s great. If you don’t pay it, you may get shunned by the neighborhood. Yeah. We generally refer to them as voluntary associations, but it’s not anything that they could attach or fine for or anything like that. Just wanted to get that out there. Represent Bauer. Thank you, mister chairman. Sorry for all the questions. I don’t know if anyone else is coming up after you, but what sort of consumer protections are in place for individuals within this covenant of a homeowners association with the HOA’s ability to levy fees and fines? Who is overseeing that? That is a great question. So we have had discussions with the attorney general’s office. So right now in the current HOA act, there is a mechanism for any disputes to be submitted to the attorney general’s office. So for those of you who are concerned about, you know, what, if we have a board who imposes too high of a fee, or we think that they’re unfairly not going through the due process, there is a mechanism in the current statute that already allows for those complaints. It is a very effective process. We had the attorney general speak to our organization last year, and we’re working with them again to come back and speak separately. In the HOA act, there is also a mechanism for dispute resolution. So if an owner has a complaint, they can submit a notice of claim, same way that an association can submit to an owner. It initiates a conversation and allows for a settlement meeting, which we think is a great thing. I know other states have actually tried and failed at doing that. It works here. And just a brief follow up. Do you know how many people take advantage of that through the attorney general’s office? I think I would say, I think we see a handful over the year. I will say this, and I did mention this at one point to Attorney General Rokita. They don’t move very quickly. I know they have a lot of issues at the attorney general’s office. They don’t move quickly, but they do investigate them. And owners are aware of the process, so they are utilizing that process. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Come on up. Familiar face. Representative, good afternoon. Thanks for waiting. State Rep. Julie Altoff. So those 5% complaints come to me. I’m just saying, I’m from Crown Point and Winfield, one of the fastest growing areas up in Lake county. And so I just wanted to say there’s a difference between the members of these associations. They do a pretty good job, but there’s a lot of homeowners associations who don’t belong to these management company groups who you pay to take care of things. So we have a lot of people who are on the boards of Hoas that really need training. And I was looking at some of the things Florida was doing as far as search certifying. But then you think, okay, if you want to run for Hoa board, then you got to take the training. And you think that would just hold back some of the people who would run. But there is really needed change. So I’m just here to. I’m on board with you guys. There is a lot of people who complain to me. The president is the husband, the treasurer is the wife. You go to a meeting, nobody knows how much money is in the bank. It goes on and on beyond the fines and can they take my house kind of thing. And back to your question about the CCRs are required before you buy a house in the statute, it’s so many days, and it’s really good if you have a management hoA that has a website, they keep the CCRs right there on the website, but that doesn’t happen all the time. I have stories of, we came to closing, plopped down the 200 page document, do you want to live here or not? So they didn’t even get a chance to read them. I also spoke to our county recorder who said, in her opinion, only maybe 40% of hoas file the current ccrs. So they’re not even doing what they’re required to do. And there’s nobody watching. Like, nobody. How do you know when something changes, you have to refile. It just isn’t happening. Which is why my mind went back to, it’s always a training issue. It’s always, do we just have them come to some traveling meeting? And now we’ve got government training. But something really needs to give. Because subdivisions are the latest form of building. They’re just not even building a street. And it’s all like pulled into an hoa. There’s trouble with people that can’t afford to replace the fountain or fix the retention ponds because nobody thought about collecting money soon. You know, like before that happens. These are expensive things. I have talked to the attorney general’s office as well. I have a chart of how many people call. It’s like the number three complaint call to the real estate division of the attorney general’s office. I have a bill already moved. Well, you know, drafted. I was waiting for this meeting to see if I should have anything that goes in it that the AG’s office is asking for a little bit more teeth for management companies and brokerage and those kind of relationships. So I just want to say I’m on board with this and thank you for bringing it. Questions for representative. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Anybody else sign up to testify on this topic? I don’t see any. Sorry. Come on up. We did not get all the sign ups for everybody, so I’ll make sure I got everybody. Go ahead. That’s okay. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I believe it’s afternoon now. Committee members thank you for having us. I am Rebecca Richter, chapter delegate for Community Associations Institute Legal Action Committee owner and board president in Whispering Woods Condominium association in Fishers, Indiana. I have lived in Indiana condos since 1994. Being a condo owner for that length of time, serving on my current board since 2019 and being involved in CAI since 2019 has given me much perspective and appreciation over the years as it relates to both the benefits and the difficulties of association living. It is the duty of board members to enforce governing documents and maintain property values. Currently, association’s primary methods of handling matters is limited to a series of letters requesting that the issue be resolved. These requests are often totally ignored and then handled on either the owner’s or the court’s timeline, which can have varying negative impacts on the entire community, including financial costs incurred by the entire association, negative aesthetics, and perhaps even reduced property values. These issues cover a wide spectrum and can range from something very seemingly simple to much more serious considerations. For example, the trash cans that sometimes owners leave out for a week at a time, allowing an owner allowing trees to overhang roofs, causing roof gutter and downspout damage for which the entire association is responsible to repair having heavy roll off dumpster containers dumped and parked onto concrete driveways for which the association is responsible to repair due to the weight of the dumpster parking on slightly rvs, trailers, campers, large trucks, etcetera, for extended periods of time in the driveway. Driveways, commencing building additions that have not been approved by the association. When owners don’t comply as requested, then the only other alternative in many cases is litigation that clogs the courts. It is expensive for all parties involved, and many associations simply do not have enough funds to pay those costs. I’m here today on behalf of my association to ask, and the good news is that we’re not asking you for any money, but we’re asking that this committee please consider letting legislation that will expand options available to all Indiana HoAs with respect to enforcement of violations. I’m in a 20 year old community. We have no provision for any fines whatsoever. So that is not an option for us at this point in time. As an owner and a board member, I support the proposal of legislation that includes a specific process before penalties and or fines are imposed that will help deter these numerous occurrences going forward, help alleviate court costs and judicial dockets. And you may ask, well, how is that going to happen? Well, just consider that you’re shifting the burden from a much larger pool of bad actor owners who are causing these violations and issues and clogging the courts, and you’re shifting that burden to a much smaller group of board members. But you need to control that by having a specific process in place that they need to follow. Also, it would benefit the much greater and vast majority of owners and residents who do voluntarily comply with association living contracts. We are asking for your help to provide both existing and new associations better tools for today’s world, enabling associations to have more effective and yet still reasonable governance. And respectfully, Senator Taylor, your comment about you don’t read the documents we see this day in and day out, you know, and it is unfortunate and some of it goes back. We just had this two weeks ago. Realtor listed a community or a unit in our community for sale. Maintenance free. We are not maintenance free. We are shared maintenance. It is low maintenance. And the association does provide for the larger things like roofing, concrete, snow, grass removal, leaf removal. But there are many things. Oh, you mean I have to replace my windows and my doors and people just, they’re not aware. And it causes a lot of difficulty then when they do purchase into the community because they just. Oh, and people buy into these associations because they like the look, the general look. And if we can’t enforce the general look with effective tools at our disposal that don’t clog up the courts, it just makes our jobs that much more difficult. But thank you for having us. I appreciate your time and your consideration going forward. And I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have of me. Questions? Senator Taylor. I’ll make this quick, mister chairman. Thank you. You know, you brought up an interesting thing, and I never thought about this, but in a condo hoa, the issues you brought up about the driveways, which the Hoa may be responsible for replacing roofs. Yes, but so should. Is there a separate statute for a Hoa in a condo community where you might have all those common areas and then versus Hoa for, I don’t know, fair to ask you this question. And then an hoa for like, a neighborhood? It’s my understanding that the Indiana Hoa Act, Hoa term, is used interchangeably between a homeowners association, a condominium association, and a pud, a planned unit development. Okay, I can speak to. There is a separate hoa act. So homeowners associations are legally distinct from condominium association. Okay, great. In townhome. Yeah. Okay. So we do have that distinction because I didn’t think about that distinction. And I would assume there’s. In most of these situations, there’s a common area, which is the real impetus behind, you know, like a neighborhood may have a pool or a clubhouse or something like that. You gotta maintain it, you gotta pay people to work there, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Okay. All right. And in a condo association, we are responsible for much more, you know, for the vinyl siding, the masonry, the brick, the roofing. My mother in law lives in one of those communities, and she’s on the board. So it can become very expensive for the association to maintain all of this common property, all of this common grassy area. If you have a pool, a tennis court, etcetera. Et cetera. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, ma’am. Appreciate it. Thank you. Did I miss anybody? No, Mister Arnold. We’re only going to do one time per person or we’re a little over schedule. You could feel free to stay after and chat with the committee members, though. Is there anything else from the committee before we adjourn? That’s all. We have to testify. Appreciate everybody’s time that we went over, and I apologize. Thank you very much. We’re adjourned.

• Representative Chris Jeter: Chair
• Senator Liz Brown: Vice-chair
• Loretta Rush: Chief Justice of Indiana
• Jeff Weiss: Office of Court Services
• Christine Osterday: Judge, Elkhart Superior Court No. 1
• Ross Maxwell: Court Administrator
• David Bonfiglio: Judge, Elkhart Superior Court No. 6
• Susie Weirich: Elkhart County Commissioner
• Linda Rogers: Senator from Elkhart County
• Additional Judges and Presenters from Various Counties (including representatives from Hamilton County, Lawrence County, Spencer County, and others)